76). The African shoes, it will be observed, are somewhat square at the toe and approaching the little V in shape.
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| fig. 75 | fig. 76 |
The central opening is somewhat triangular, and in the Moorish shoe the heels are welded and bent up towards the frog. As the horse can only suffer in the part that is most sensitive, they think, and not in the part that is hard, it is, of course, the frog that should be shielded from accident. The shoes should therefore cover the frogs. But this practice, and the undue curvature they give to the heels of the metal plate, is productive of great injury to the parts they were intended to protect; pebbles and gravel insinuate themselves between the shoe and the frog, and seriously damage the latter; while the point of the shoe, pressing unduly on the heels, produces such pain that the poor horse is often compelled to walk on his toes. The sole pressure exercised by the shoe is decidedly beneficial, and explains in a great measure the almost total absence of contracted hoofs and various lamenesses which are the bane of our horses. They give to the nail-heads the form of a grasshopper's head, the only shape, they allege, that allows the nails to be worn down to the last
