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.
[Illustration: Fig. 73.--Three-quarter Shoe.]
=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.
[Illustration: Fig. 74.--"Knocked-up" Shoes--with and without an inner
Calkin.]
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.
[Illustration: Fig. 75.--Toe of Hind Shoe showing the edge which cuts
the Front Foot.]
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.
[Illustration: Fig. 76.--Toe of Hind Shoe showing rounded inside
border.]
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).
[Illustration: Fig. 77.--Toe of Fore Shoe. The arrows mark the place
struck in "forging."]
[Illustration: Fig. 78.--Toe of Hind Shoe showing the edge which
strikes the Fore Shoe.]
[Illustration: Fig. 79.--Toe of Fore Shoe with inner border bevelled
off.]
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.