George William Cox

“ It is enough to say that for horses which have to move rapidly, and to come down with a sudden shock on sticky and slippery ground, the natural course of the process of expansion and contraction is of the first importance. For those who may care nothing for the gratification of hunting-men, it may be amusing or provoking to learn that, in times of hard frost, hunters have been enabled to chase the prey by the aid of gutta-percha soles fastened to the feet; but all who are anxious only for the welfare of the horse will see in this fact strong evidence of the uselessness of the iron shoe. ”

“ We may now look back with some feeling of envious regret on the wiser, because more natural, methods of the ancient world; and future generations will look back with feelings of simple wonderment at the infatuation which could submit without a struggle to a system which doomed the horse to unnecessary disease and agony and to a premature death, while it deprived his owner of wealth often sorely needed for his own welfare and that of all depending on him. ”

“ It was impossible that they could notice a practice which was unknown to the ancient world, and which is in truth simply a modern, as it is also a most uncalled-for, barbarism. No iron helped to produce the heavy sound of solid horn which Virgil ascribes to the fiery steed of Pollux. Of late years we have heard much of the unjustifiable waste of time spent on classical literature which has no practical bearing on the interests of modern life. It is unfortunate that Xenophon’s treatise on the management of horses has not formed one of the subjects for the upper forms of our public schools ”

“ The unshod horse can tread firmly on the slime of wood pavement when shod horses are slipping and struggling in agony around them; he can gallop on ice, and trot for miles together on the hardest and roughest flint roads, with far more ease and comfort than horses whose feet are shod with iron, or even with gutta-percha. ”

“ But it is scarcely necessary to cite more instances of the vast benefits which those who have had the courage to leave the feet of their horses as Nature made them have received under the most varied conditions of work, of soil, and of climate. Humanity and self-interest here point in the same direction, and only folly of the most perverse kind will have the hardihood to fight for the maintenance of the existing system. ”

“ The suspicion that the foot is not treated rightly by the traditionary method never enters their minds; and they deal with the limb not from a knowledge of its anatomy, structure, and purpose, but in accordance with the popular notions, which are, in plain speech, outrageously absurd. In profound ignorance that the hoof is porous, they apply hoof-ointments, which answer to cement plastered on a wall. If these were in constant use, Mr. Douglas asserts emphatically that not a morsel of sound horn would remain at the end of six months on the horses, and shoeing would become an impossibility. ”

“ Private owners and companies whose horses must be numbered by troops are naturally irritated by the accidents constantly occurring on smooth and slimy pavements or on rough and hard stone or flint roads, and in their disgust they now offer rewards for the invention of a shoe which shall render the horse indifferent to the materials over which he has to pass, and clamor for a uniform system of pavements in all towns. ”

“ Douglas, it is true, holds that civilization involves the need of a shoe of some sort for horses as for men; Mr. Mayhew advocates the use of the tip, and, as we have said, it is not in human nature to stop short at such a point as this. It is obvious that, if the complete abandonment of iron is followed by increased efficiency and power of endurance on the part of the horse, as well as by deliverance from a number of painful and highly injurious diseases, the owner is directly and largely benefited in more ways than one. His horses live in greater comfort and for a longer time ”

“ It is enough to reply that he speaks distinctly of roads covered with stones, and of the benefit which the horse derives from traversing them. There is not a word to justify a suspicion that he would have shrunk from the hardest roadway of modern times. Xenophon is thus in complete agreement with Lord Pembroke’s remark, that the constant use of litter in a stable makes the feet tender and causes swelled legs. In his judgment the bare stone pavement will cool, harden, and improve a horse’s feet merely by his standing on it. ”

“ It is a miserable fact that grooms on their own responsibility are in the habit of administering secretly to horses medicines the cost of which they pay themselves. It may fairly be said that in every case the remedy is ill-judged, and creates worse mischief than that which it is designed to remove. Among these medicines, arsenic, antimony, and niter seem to be the favorites; but the list of remedies is not ended with these. The experience of ages, if it has failed to do more, has impressed on them the fact that the chief source of the sufferings of horses is to be found in the foot. ”

“ There will no longer be an outcry for uniformity in the system of paving towns, for horses will go as well on one kind of pavement as on another. There will no longer be querulous demands on inventors for the devising of a perfect shoe, because it will be clearly seen that this perfect shoe has been furnished already by nature, and that it is only human ignorance and conceit which has marred the work of God. ”

“ In Mexico, Peru, Brazil, and elsewhere, he found that unshod horses were daily worked over roads of all kinds, carrying heavy packs from the interior down to the coast, the journey thither and back being often extended to several hundreds of miles, and that they accomplish these journeys without ever wearing out their hoofs; and the roads in these countries, where they exist at all, are neither softer nor smoother than those of England or of Ireland. If horses fell lame, it was from causes incidental to the climate, and for these the system of shoeing would supply no remedy. ”

“ The main question is, whether mankind after all has not been forestalled in this invention; and it is absolutely certain that those who have labored most conscientiously to improve the shoeing of horses have striven especially to secure for them the power of moving safely over materials of many kinds. These men have been convinced that the traditional methods overload the foot of the horse with iron, and that the modes of fastening on this iron interfere with, if not altogether obstruct, the processes of nature. ”

“ Every one, we may be told, is well aware that the management of horses is very faulty, that their lives are shortened by the ignorance of those who have charge of them rather than by any wanton cruelty, and that they are rendered practically useless long before their existence is brought to an end. To the plea that the same, or much the same, things may be said of men as of horses, we may answer that the blame must be apportioned to the degree of carelessness with which evils affecting either men or horses are allowed to go on unchecked, or are foolishly dealt with ”

“ Many who think that the new theory may look well enough on paper will doubt its value in practice, and will regard their own horses as exceptions to which it can not apply. With a strange ignorance of fact, they will insist that unshod horses may move safely over smooth and soft ground, but must fail when it is rugged, and hard, and stony, or will be oppressed by a vague dread that a horse which has gone well enough without shoes for six months may break down in the seventh. ”

“ IF we say that of all brute animals none is more valuable to man than the horse, and that the neglect of any means which may promote and insure his welfare and efficiency is a blunder not easily distinguishable from crime, we may fairly be charged with uttering truisms. ”

“ It can not, indeed, be too often repeated or too strongly insisted on, that the foot of the horse in no way needs to rest on soft and yielding surfaces. The very opposite of this is the truth, and this truth was perceived as clearly by Xenophon as by the ablest physiologists of our own day. ”

“ In towns and cities the roads are, and must be, paved, and the pavings at present are variously of stone, wood, or asphalt, where the road is not macadamized. These pavements have, it would seem, each its own peculiar dangers for the horses which use them; and each has thus become a fruitful source of controversy. If any one method be likely to supersede the rest, the victory will probably be for the asphalt; but horses are found to slip seriously upon it, and the falls so caused are, we are told, of a graver kind than those on pavements of other sorts. ”

“ Farm-horses suffer with terrible severity from this cause; but the horses used in carrying trades and by railway companies undergo a more cruel ordeal. Improvements in the break-power of wagons used on roads, which might greatly lessen the mischief, are not made, and hence the horses are seldom free from diseases more or less serious, which may be traced directly to constant slipping and shaking over slippery pavements. Among ignorant owners, blind to their own interests, there is an impression that “the work which kills one horse will bring in money enough to buy another” ”

“ It seems hard to produce the conviction that the natural sole of the horse’s foot is almost impenetrable, that it is so hard and strong as to protect the sensible sole from all harm, and that all feet exposed to hard objects are made harder by the contact, provided only that the sole is never pared. ”

“ W. Douglas, late veterinary surgeon in the Tenth Hussars, who tells us that a horse should live from thirty-five to forty years, and live actively and usefully during three fourths of this period. "All authorities," he says, "now admit that animals should live five times as long as it takes them to reach maturity. A dog, which is at its full growth when between two and three years old, is very aged at twelve years. Horses do not, unless their growth is forced, reach their full prime until they are seven or eight years old, which by the same law leaves them to live some thirty years longer. ”

“ Speaking, as he says, not from theory, but from wide and varied experience, Xenophon insists that, in order to insure the healthiness of horses, stable-floors must not be smooth or damp, that they should be lined with stones of irregular shapes, of much the same size as the animal’s hoof, and that the ground outside the stable, on which it is groomed, should be covered in parts with loose stones laid down in large quantities, but surrounded by an iron rim to prevent their being scattered. ”

“ On one side it is urged that there should be a uniform system of paving enforced on all towns, so that horses should no longer pass from a less slippery road to one that is more slippery; on the other the contention is that the true remedy lies not in uniformity of paving, but in the discovery of a shoe which shall effectually prevent the horse from slipping anywhere. ”

“ Serious and fatal injuries may be the result of stumblings and slippings not less than of actual falls; and the premature wearing out of horses by excessive straining of their sinews and muscles is a direct pecuniary loss to the owners, although few of them seem to realize the true significance of the fact. These evils are to be seen everywhere, and they affect horses kept for the purpose of pleasure and ostentation almost as much as those which spend their days in a round of monotonous drudgery. A horse should not be obliged to work in going down a hill ”

“ When nothing is left but this fragment of the traditional shoe, and when even this fragment has, as in Massachusetts and elsewhere, been retained for the fore-feet only, it is incredible that men should fail to ask what the use of this relic of the old system may be. Donkeys in Ireland are unshod, and they work on roads at least as rough, hard, slimy, and slippery as those of England. ”

“ The number of horses in the United Kingdom has been estimated at rather more than two millions and a quarter, and their average value can scarcely be set down at less than thirty pounds. Their collective value, therefore, falls little short of £68,000,000. That the nation incurs a loss if this sum is spent quicker than it needs to be is a self-evident proposition; that it is so spent is certain, if horses on an average become useless at a time when they ought still to be in full vigor. ”

“ They are, at least, outspoken. In the last century Lord Pembroke spoke of grooms as being "generally the worst informed of all persons living." "No other servant," says Mr. Mayhew, "possesses such power, and no domestic more abuses his position. It is impossible to amend the regulation of any modern stable without removing some of this calling, or overthrowing some of the abuses with a perpetuation of which the stable servant is directly involved." In this state of things the most humane of masters becomes, he adds, an unconscious tyrant to the brute which serves him so well. ”

“ If we take the age of three years as that at which horses begin to work, and twelve as that at which they are worn out, it follows that the period of their efficiency is shorter by at least fourteen years than it should be. In other words, the nation has to buy three horses when it ought to buy only one, and thus upward of 200,000,000 are spent every twenty-one years in the purchase of horses when 68,000,000 ought to suffice. ”

“ With regard to these we have only to see what the evils are; and the blame is ours, and ours alone, if we fail to apply the remedy, when the remedy, if applied, must be successful. In the case of the horse, unhappily, we do not realize the extent of the mischief, and seldom, perhaps never, fix our minds on its cause or causes. ”