CHAPTER VIII.

INJURIES FROM SHOEING.

Even with the most careful farrier injury may occur during shoeing, or may arise as the result of the operation. Sometimes the foot, from its condition or form, renders an accident possible, and it may be so diseased, or defective, as to render shoeing with safety very improbable. Sometimes the shoe is to blame, and sometimes the nail or clip. A few words about each of the common injuries may be useful as helps to their avoidance or as guides to their remedying.

=From nails= two kinds of injury may result. The most common arises from the nail being driven too near the sensitive parts, and is known as a _bind_. The nail does not really penetrate the sensitive foot, but is so near as to press unduly upon it. This condition causes lameness, which is generally not noticed till a day or two after the shoeing. It is readily detected by the farrier on removing the shoe and trying all the tracks of the nails in the hoof by pressure with pincers. When the lameness is slight removal of the nail and one or two days rest are all that is required. When the lameness is great it may be suspected that the injury has caused the formation of matter within the hoof. This must, of course, be allowed to escape, and the services of a veterinary surgeon are advisable.

Any neglect in these cases, such as working the horse after lameness has appeared, or delay in removing the offending nail, may lead to very serious changes in the foot, or even to death of the horse.

Another injury caused by nails is from a direct puncture of the sensitive foot. This may be slight, as in cases where the farrier in driving the nail misdirects it and so stabs the sensitive parts, but immediately withdraws the nail knowing what has happened. The lameness resulting from this is usually slight. Very much more serious is the lameness resulting from a nail which pierces the sensitive foot and is not recognised at once by the farrier. As a rule, lameness is immediate, and should the horse perform a journey before the nail is removed, serious damage is certain to follow.

Want of skill in driving a nail is not always the chief cause of "binding" or "pricking" a horse. More often than not the form and position of the nail-holes is the primary cause, for if the nail-holes in the shoe are too "coarse" or badly pitched it is quite impossible to safely drive nails through them. Sometimes the nails are defective, and this was much more common when nails were all hand-made. Bad iron or bad workmanship led to nails splitting within the hoof, and whilst one half came out through the wall the other portion turned in and penetrated the sensitive foot causing a most dangerous injury. The best brands of machine-made nails, now generally used, are remarkably free from this defect.

No lameness resulting from injury by a nail should be neglected. If detected and attended to at once few cases are serious. If neglected, the very simplest may end in permanent damage to the horse. By treating these accidents as unpardonable, horse-owners rather encourage farriers to disguise them or to not acknowledge them. If the workman would always be careful to search for injury and when he found it acknowledge the accident, many simple cases would cease to develop into serious ones. Frank acknowledgement is always best, but is less likely to take place when it is followed by unqualified blame than when treated as an accident which may have been accompanied by unavoidable difficulties.

=From clips= lameness may arise. A badly drawn clip is not easily laid level and flat on the wall. When hammered down excessively it causes pressure on the sensitive foot, and lameness. When side clips are used--one each side of the foot--it is not difficult to cause lameness by driving them too tightly against the wall. They then hold the hoof as if in a vice. When shoes get loose or are partially torn off the horse may tread on the clip, and if it be high and sharp very dangerous wounds result.

=From the shoe=, injury results from any uneven pressure, especially when the horny covering of the foot is weak and thin. The horn becomes broken and split, and the bearing for a shoe is more or less spoiled. Flat feet are liable to be bruised by the pressure of the inner circumference of the shoe at the toe. Lameness from this cause is easily detected by removing the shoe and testing the hoof with the pincers. If attended to at once, and the bearing of the shoe removed from the part little injury results. If neglected, inflammatory changes in the sensitive parts are sure to arise.

=Corns= in horses are due to bruising of the angle of the sole by the heel of the shoe. A wide open foot with low heels is most likely to suffer, but any foot may be injured. The most common seat of injury is the inner heel of a fore-foot. Even a properly fitted shoe may cause a corn if retained too long upon a foot, as then, owing to the growth of the hoof, its extremity is carried forward from beneath the wall so as to press upon the sole. A short shoe, fitted too close on the inside, is the most common cause of corn. To guard against the shoe being trodden on by the opposite foot the inside is generally fitted close, and to guard against being trodden on by the hind foot it is often fitted short. Thus to prevent accidents of one kind methods are adopted which, being a little overdone, lead to injury of another. A not uncommon error in the preparation of the foot for shoeing may also lead to the production of the so-called corn. If the wall on the inside heel be lowered more than it should be the horn of the sole is left higher than the wall, and then a level shoe presses unevenly upon the higher part.

A corn, be it remembered, is not a tumour or a growth, it is merely a bruise of the sensitive foot under the horn of the sole. It shows itself by staining the horn red, just as a bruise on the human body shows a staining of the skin above it. To "cut out a corn" with the idea of removing it is simply an ignorant proceeding. If a corn be slight all that is necessary is to take off the pressure of the shoe, and this is assisted by removing a thin slice or two of horn at the part. When the injury is very great matter may be formed under the horn, and of course must be let out by removal of the horn over it. Provided there is no reason to believe that matter has formed, a corn, _i.e._, the bruised and discoloured horn, should not be dug out in the ruthless manner so commonly adopted. Cutting away all the horn of the sole at the heels leaves the wall without any support. When the shoe rests upon the wall it is unable to sustain the weight without yielding, and thus an additional cause of irritation and soreness is manufactured. The excessive paring of corns is the chief reason of the difficulty of getting permanently rid of them. The simplest device for taking all pressure off a corn is to cut off an inch and a half of the inner heel of the shoe. With the three-quarter shoe (Fig. 73) a horse will soon go sound, and his foot will then resume its healthy state. The saying "once a corn, always a corn" is not true, but it is true that a bruised heel is tender and liable to bruise again, from very slight unevenness of pressure, for at least three months. All that is necessary is care in fitting and abstention from removal of too much horn at the part. Of course when the degree of lameness is such as to suggest that matter is formed the horn must be cut away so as to afford an exit for it, but the majority of corns are detected long before the stage of suppuration has resulted from a bruise.

=A burnt Sole.= In fitting a hot shoe to a foot it sometimes happens that the sensitive parts under the sole at the toe are injured by heat. This is most likely to occur with a foot on which the horn is thin, especially if it also be flat or convex. Burning the sole is an injury which must be put down to negligence. It does not occur from the shoe being too hot but from its being too long retained, and may be expected when the fireman is seen holding a dull-red hot shoe on to a foot, with a doormen assisting to "bed it in" by pressing it to the foot with a rasp. When the heat of a shoe penetrates through the horn with sufficient intensity to blister the sensitive parts of the foot great pain and lameness result. In many cases separation of the sole from the "quick" takes place, and some weeks pass before the horse can resume work.

=Treads= are injuries to the coronet caused by the shoe of the opposite foot, and are usually found on the front or inside of the hind feet. The injury may take the form of a bruise and the skin remain unbroken, it may appear as a superficial jagged wound, or it may take the form of a tolerably clean cut, in which case, although at first bleeding is very free, ultimate recovery is rapid. Bruises on the coronet--just where hair and hoof meet--are always to be looked upon as serious. The slighter cases, after a few days pain and lameness, pass away leaving only a little line showing where the hoof has separated from the skin. This separation is not serious unless a good deal of swelling has accompanied it, and even then only time is required to effect a cure. In more serious cases an extensive slough takes place, and the coronary band which secretes the wall may be damaged. The worst cases are those in which deep seated abscesses occur, as they often terminate in a "quittor." The farrier should always recognise a tread as possibly dangerous and obtain professional advice.

It is a common custom to rasp away the horn of the wall immediately beneath any injury of the coronet, but it is a useless proceeding which weakens the hoof and does no good to the inflamed tissues above or beneath.

Treads are most common in horses shod with heavy shoes and high calkins--a fact which suggests that a low square calkin and a shoe fitted not too wide at the heels is a possible preventive.

"Cutting" or "Brushing."

By these terms is meant the injury to the inside of the fetlock joint which results from bruising by the opposite foot. Possibly some small proportion of such injuries are traceable to the system of shoeing, to the form of shoe, or to the action of the horse. They are, with few exceptions, the direct result of want of condition in the horse and are almost confined to young horses, old weak horses, or animals that have been submitted to some excessively long and tiring journey. The first thing a horse-owner does when his horse "brushes" is to send him to the farrier to have his shoes altered. In half the cases there is nothing wrong with the shoes, and all that is required is a little patience till the horse gains hard condition. At the commencement of a coaching season half the horses "cut" their fetlocks, no matter how they are shod. At the end of the season none of them touch the opposite joint, with perhaps a few exceptions afflicted with defective formation of limb, or constitutions that baffle all attempts at getting hard condition. The same thing is seen in cab and omnibus stock. All the new horses "cut" their legs for a few weeks. The old ones, with a few exceptions, work in any form of shoe, but never touch their joints. They "cut" when they are out of condition--when their limbs soon tire; but they never "cut" when they are in condition--when they have firm control of the action of their limbs. There are, however, a few horses that are always a source of trouble, and there are conditions of shoeing which assist or prevent the injury. The hind legs are the most frequently affected and this because of the calkins. Many horses will cease "cutting" at once if the calkins of the shoes be removed and a level shoe adopted. There are certain forms of shoe which are supposed to be specially suitable as preventives. A great favourite is the "knocked-up-shoe"--_i.e._, a shoe with no nails on the inside except at the toe, and a skate-shaped inner branch.

These shoes are fitted not only close to the inner border of the wall but within it, and the horn at the toe is then rasped off level with the shoe. Whether they are of any use is a question, but there is no question of the harm they do to the foot. Some farriers are partial to a three-quarter-shoe--one from which a couple of inches of the inside heel has been removed. Some thicken the outside toe, some the inside toe. Some raise one heel, some the other, and some profess to have a principle of fitting the shoe based upon the formation of the horse's limb and the peculiarity of his action. If in practice success attended these methods I should advise their adoption, but my experience is that numerous farriers obtain a special name for shoeing horses that "cut," when their methods, applied to quite similar cases, are as antagonistic as the poles. A light shoe without calkins has at any rate negative properties--it will not assist the horse to injure himself. For all the other forms and shapes I have a profound contempt, but as people will have changes, and as the most marked departure from the ordinary seems to give the greatest satisfaction, it is perhaps "good business" to supply what is appreciated.

The two great cures for "cutting" are--regular work and good old beans. When a man drives a horse forty miles in a day at a fast pace he, of course, blames the farrier for all damage to the fetlocks. He is merely illogical.

Over-reaching.

This is an injury to the heel--generally the inner--of a front foot. The heel is struck by the inner border of the toe of the hind shoe. Over-reach occurs at a gallop in this country, but is seen in America as the result of a mis-step in the fast trotters. An over-reach can only occur when the fore foot is raised from the ground and the hind foot reaches right into the hollow of the fore foot. When the fore and hind feet in this position separate the inner border of the toe of the hind shoe catches the heel of the fore foot and cuts off a slice. This cut portion often hangs as a flap, and when it does the attachment is always at the back, showing that the injury was not from behind forwards as it would be if caused by a direct blow, but from before backwards--in other words by a dragging action of the hind foot as it leaves the front one. An over-reach then may result either from the fore limb being insufficiently extended, or from the hind limb being over extended.

The prevention of this injury is effected by rounding off the inside edge of the hind shoe as shown below.

Speedy-cut.

This is an injury inflicted on the inner surface of the lower part of the knee joint by a blow from the toe of the shoe of the opposite foot. It occurs at a trot, and very seldom except when a horse is tired or over-paced. A horse that has once "speedy-cut" is apt to do so again and it may cause him to fall. Such horses should be shod "close" on the inside, and care should be taken that the heels of the foot which strikes should be kept low. In some cases a three-quarter shoe (see Fig. 73) on the offending foot prevents injury.

"Forging" or "Clacking."

This is not an injury but an annoyance. It is the noise made by the striking of the hind shoe against the front as the horse is trotting. Horses "forge" when young and green, when out of condition or tired. As a rule, a horse that makes this noise is a slovenly goer, and will cease to annoy when he gets strength and goes up to his bit. Shoeing makes a difference, and in some cases at once stops it. The part of the front shoe struck is the inner border round the toe. (Fig. 77). The part of the hind shoe that strikes is the outer border at the inside and outside toe. (Fig. 78).

To alter the fore shoe, round off the inner border; or use a shoe with no inner border such as the concave hunting shoe To alter the toe of the hind shoe is useless, but by using a level shoe without calkins some advantage is gained. A so-called "diamond-toed" shoe has been recommended. It is not advisable as it does no good except by causing its point to strike the sole of the front foot. If by such a dodge the sound is got rid of it is only by running the risk of injuring the foot.