Part 14

Some years ago a brown thorough-bred mare became gradually afflicted by a spavin on each hind leg, which, on due consultation, were declared to be incurable except by firing.

To undergo this painful prescription she was led from a stable where she had been residing by herself to the cavalry barracks at Hounslow, about a mile off, where she was placed in a stable full of horses for a day or two to undergo a preparatory dose of physic.

By men and ropes she was then cast, fired, and in the course of two or three days, as soon as she could bear moving, she was slowly led back to her master, who, with kind intentions, turned her into a small field of nice, cool, luxuriant grass, about one hundred yards beyond his house.

After eating a few mouthfuls the poor animal raised her head, snorted, looked first on one side, then on the other, snorted again, stretched out her tail, trotted up to a stiff post and rail fence, which she cleared, and then passing unnoticed the loose box in which for many months she had lived, forgetting and forgiving all the sufferings that had been inflicted upon her, with raw, bleeding legs, she galloped along the hard macadamised road to the cavalry stable, to re-enjoy the society of the dozen horses which only for a few days she had had the happiness of associating with.

In constructing a stable the main object should be to secure to the lungs of the horse pure air, and to prevent the hay in the loft above him from being impaired by foul air.

By a simple shaft or chimney, and by other well-known modes of ventilation, both these advantages can be obtained; and yet they are, comparatively speaking, of no avail, if beneath the straw bed on which the horse lies there exists a substratum generating and emitting gases of a highly deleterious composition.

A stable may be well ventilated and well drained, the forage may be of the best description, and yet all may be impaired by an atmosphere unfit for respiration; for if foul litter beneath be only covered, as is often, and in many stables is usually the case, by a layer of white straw, (like a dirty shirt under a suit of fine new clothing), distemper and disease must be the result.

Although therefore it should be the secondary duty of a good groom to clean his horse, his primary duty is to clean his stable; for as, in a fast and long run across a deep country, it is undeniable that the healthiest lungs must triumph, it follows that a clean horse out of a dirty stable cannot live with a dirty one of exactly the same character and cast out of a clean stable.

But as it is always easier to preach wisdom than to practise it, so is it infinitely easier to prescribe clean litter than to maintain it. Indeed, it is almost impossible to keep straw under a horse perfectly pure; and accordingly, throughout the United States of America, and even in New York, horses are often made to lie on bare boards, on which they appear to sleep just as soundly as in a state of nature they would sleep on ground baked hard by the sun.

On this fact being privately whispered by us to the authorities at the Horse Guards, it was at once repudiated by the assertion that it would ruin English cavalry horses were they to be made to sleep without litter on hard boards; and yet all the soldiers of Europe, cavalry as well as infantry, in their guard rooms sleep and snore on wooden beds, probably a good deal sounder than do their respective sovereigns on bedding composed of wool, hair, down, feathers, fine linen, blankets, and counterpanes.

"Canst thou, O partial Sleep! give thy repose To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude; And, in the calmest and most stillest night, With all appliances and means to boot, Deny it to a king?"--Henry IV.

Another disadvantage of straw-litter is that horses with a voracious appetite are sometimes prone to eat it, whether it be clean or dirty. To prevent them from thus distending as well as injuring their stomachs, it is usual to inflict upon them a muzzle, which, by impeding respiration, is more or less injurious to the lungs.

A better and indeed an effectual mode of prevention is to substitute for straw, wooden shavings, which form a cheap, wholesome, clean, and comfortable bed.

+On Shoeing.+

As a railway carriage is constructed on springs to soften all ordinary jolts, and with buffers to alleviate any violent concussion;--as the human mind is gifted with a buoyancy which enables it cheerfully to meet any trifling vexation, and with sentiments of religion which maintain its serenity under the severest afflictions, so do the pastern above a horse's foot and the frog beneath it protect the body of the animal from the continual slight concussions and occasional severe ones to which, in ordinary and extraordinary exertions, it is liable to be subjected.

The pastern, like the instep of those Spanish women whose heels in walking scarcely touch the ground, gives grace and elasticity to every step; indeed, in the walk, trot, canter, and gallop of a horse we clearly see the spring of his pasterns softening the movements of their own creation.

But while the career of the body is thus rendered safe and delightful, the interior mechanism of the foot is protected by one of those simple, beautiful, mechanical arrangements which in every direction demonstrate to us the superintending providence of an Almighty Power.

If the sole, front, sides, and back of a hunter's foot had been created as solid and as inelastic as the gold or silver case of what is called a hunting watch, the interior of the former, like that of the latter, would receive material damage from a heavy blow against the ground.

The coating, however, of hard horn or armour which shields the front and sides of the sensitive foot from any obstacle in its course, does not equally extend to that portion of it in the rear, out of harm's way, called the heels, beneath which we find on examination a triangular cushion of an Indiarubber-like composition, which, on concussion, or even by compression, acting as a wedge, forces the heels that contain it, outwards.

By this beautiful arrangement, when a hunter with his front legs extended, jumping over a broad fence, lands on a hard macadamised road upon his two fore-feet, the heels which receive the greater portion of the concussion are expanded by it in exact proportion to the weight of the bodies of the horse and rider, and the violence of the blow being thus alleviated, the sensitive mechanism of the foot is shielded from injury. And yet, strange to say, simply by the act of shoeing, this merciful protection in every country in the world is, generally speaking, destroyed!

If a mischievous or ignorant clown were to drive a nail through a chronometer, he would only destroy an insensible and inanimate work of art; but when a man of wealth, intelligence, and science--the proprietor of a valuable horse, on whose safe going his comfort, and occasionally his life depends--deliberately nails to the poor creature's living, expansible feet four obdurate, inexpansible iron shoes, he is really guilty of an act of barbarity and barbarism which would scarcely be expected from a savage, for besides instantly impeding the expansive apparatus of the foot, he effectually stops its growth.

Under this treatment the young horse, by day and by night, not only lives in shoes which, though they may not hurt him very much in the stable, always pinch him "in his utmost need," or rather speed; but, like a Chinese lady, he outgrows his own feet, until, on attaining his full size, it is discovered that his body, which, like that of Dives, his master, has always worn fine clothing, and has fared sumptuously every day, has nothing but a set of colt's feet with contracted heels to carry it!

To prevent, or at least to alleviate the sufferings acute and chronic just described, Mr. Turner, of Regent Street, introduced the unilateral system of what he called "half-nailing," which consists in affixing the shoe by nails on the outside and round the toe only, leaving the inner side totally unsecured.

By theorists it was, of course, asserted that this arrangement would prove to be defective and inefficient. In practice, however, not only is the contrary the result, but, on nearly thirty years' experience, we are enabled to maintain the apparent paradox that in riding along or across any and every description of country, a shoe, when half-nailed, is more secure than when wholly nailed; in fact, that it is insecure almost in proportion as it is tightly nailed, and secure in proportion as it is loosely nailed.

The reasons are obvious.

When a horse is standing still, or lying fast asleep in his stable, his shoes are, of course, firmer when wholly than when only half-nailed. So soon, however, as, mounted by say a heavy man, he begins to move, there commences, out of sight of every human eye, a desperate, and in deep ground a subterranean struggle between the works of Nature and of Vulcan the blacksmith, or, in plainer words, between the expansive efforts of the frog and hoof and the arbitrary metallic shoe that is restraining them.

At each step the contest is renewed; and while, by an acceleration of pace, its violence is increased, the domination of the tyrant at every stride is infinitesimally diminished in consequence of the nails, which have to bear the whole brunt of the battle, becoming looser and looser, until, by a jump on hard ground, or some other violent concussion, the expansive power of the foot bursts the impaired fetters that have been restraining it, and the poor animal, thus suddenly emancipated from his shoe, leaves it either buried in mud, or, with every nail in its socket, glittering on the grass behind him.

Now, under the system of half-nailing, the battle we have just very faintly described does not take place. The foot can't struggle against nails which don't exist; and accordingly, just as the pliant reed remains erect after the storm that in its immediate neighbourhood has torn up by its roots the sturdy oak, so does the half-nailed shoe, by allowing the horse's foot to expand, perform by gentleness what violence has failed to effect; and therefore it remains, throughout a severe run, hard and fast, where Vulcan placed it.