Horseshoeing for the Rank Beginner
(Page 2 of 6)
September/October 1970
By the Mother Earth News editors
Dull tools are a common problem. The hoof knife, nippers, and rasp must be sharp or the beginner is doomed at the outset. Protection during storage and transportation is important. More nippers and rasps are dulled bouncing around in the back of a pickup or rusting in a tool box than are ever worn out in use.
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Now let's go to work on those feet. The best old farriers I know start with the left front and work around the horse counter-clockwise, winding up at the right front. They repeat this sequence for each of the operations until all four feet are shod.
If the horse is shod, we must pull the old shoes. First clean the mud and debris from the sole with a hoof pick (I like an old pritchel). Under normal conditions, the nails and shoes will not be excessively worn in the six weeks or less (hopefully) since the last shoeing. Therefore, it is nec essary to "cut the clinches" before pulling the shoe. Various methods will do this job, but I like to use a small cold chisel. Tap it up under the points with the shoeing hammer and straighten the clinches. Then grasp one heel with the pullers, and pull forward and down, always in a vertical plane. Do not twist sideways, as you have tremendous leverage working against the small bones in the pastern joint. Repeat with the other heel, and keep working forward on each side until the shoe is off.
Next comes the most important part of the entire job: preparation of the hoof to receive the shoe. Great crackerbarrel debates have been conducted over how much trimming should be done on the sole and frog with hoof knife. Here is my approach: Trim off the flaps of dead tissue around the frog and bars to the extent that the structures appear clean and distinct, and so that you can detect any problems or abnormalities. Get more vigorous as you approach the toe. Cut just inside the white line deep enough to where the sole will give somewhat in response to thumb pressure. Once in a while you will draw some blood in this manner. Stop cutting if you hit blood, but no harm has been done. However, don't be fooled by dry red flecks embedded in the sole. Work around them carefully, but often they will cut right out. They bear no relation to the depth of cut needed.
When this point on the toe has been determined, you are ready to use the nippers. Now you must decide how much to take off the heels. There have been lengthy discussions as to proper methods of "leveling the foot", the "angle" the hoof makes with the pastern joint, etc. However, once you have determined how far you are going to take your toe down and how much to take off one heel, these decisions have all been made. Obviously, you are going to leave the other heel the same length. (I check by looking at the back of the foot, and comparing the distance from the hair line to the heel on each side of the frog.) And three points determine a plane! (Figure 3). The normal amateur makes the mistake of taking too much off the heel. This gives the foot a broken-backward appearance. I think this results from the fact that the heel doesn't grow as fast as the toe. When shoeing a horse that has been running barefoot, you often don't need to take anything off the heels.
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