The management and treatment of the horse in the stable, field, and ...

116 The Management and Treatment of the Horse,
High caulkings, and indeed caulkings of any kind,
are a curse to the horse, and until a class is opened for
instructing the blacksmith in the fundamental principles
of the foot, the absurd, foolish, and ridiculous system of
shoeing will not improve. The old smiths will tell us
that they have shod horses upon that principle all their
lives, and their fathers did so before them, so they must
know ; and they instil this doctrine into their ap-
prentices, and after they have served their time they in
their turn become as pig-headed as their teacher, and
strongly opposed to any alteration of the system. The
man who dares to assert that there can and ought to be
improvements made is considered a raving lunatic. The
treatment I have always adopted in sandcrack is that
which was recommended to me by Mr. Broad, of Bath,
and his brother in London. If my patient is lame I im-
mediately put on a bar-shoe. A bar-shoe is a round
shoe, not a common shoe made of bar-iron, fitted full at
the toe with a clip on each side, but having no bearing
opposite the crack. The shoe is fitted long, and made
thin at the heel, the object being to enable the horse to
bear his weight on the heels, which he can do better in
this shaped shoe than any other, or indeed even without
a shoe, at the same time applying plenty of cold water to
the coronet. Nothing will make the horn grow so fast
as plenty of cold water. Some people order poultices,
but they are difficult to keep on; holes are sure to wear
through the bag, the poultice falls through, and the loot
becoming dry, they do more harm than good. Give
physic, and in nine cases out of ten the patient in a few
days is free from lameness. I then adopt a practice