What percentage of horse owners accompany their horses to the forge and see them shod? and, what is of great importance, see their feet when the shoes are removed? They would be astonished, for instance, to find amongst many horses that, when the toe had been pared and rasped, they would be able to discover that the outer layer of the wall or crust did not make one body with the inner layer, as it should do if the foot were healthy, but is separated from it by dry fibre. This is the way in which seedy toe begins; and the joint causes of it are, standing on dirty litter, the use of hoof ointments, stopping with cowdung, &c., burning the seat of the shoe with a hot shoe, slipping down hill, &c.
If the owner makes a remark thereon to the farrier, he will be told that ‘many good horses are naturally like that; but it does not hurt them if they are well shod.’ Let them look at the feet of a colt, or of a brood mare, that has been running unshod at grass, and see whether they can find anything like it. They certainly cannot; for no unshod horse was ever known to have such a thing, any more than corns (from which unshod horses are also entirely free). Remarking on this separation of the outer and inner horn of the wall, Mayhew says: ‘Pathology has indirectly recognised the intention of their function, by acknowledging that condition to be a state of disease, wherein the two kinds of horn are separated. Such a division is known as seedy toe, and as false quarter; and the foot is recognised as weakened when such a want of union
