Morning journal and courier., 1889-11-25
 THE HORSES FOOT.

Shecing Discussed Pro and COn-A
 Champion of the Unshod Horse.
 The Journal of the United States Cavalry Association for this quarter leads of with discussion of interest to a far wider audi enoe than thst which the magazine is sup- posed to be specially addressed. "A Horses Foot" the title of the opening article by Lieutenant Charles D. Parkhurst, is the sub- jeot of kind of symposium upon the shoe- ing of horses worthy of the attention of eve- " owner of a horse. Lieutenant Parkhurst is stout believer in the dnshod horse. Neither can he be regarded as . mere theo- rist, which the average horseman, incredu. lous of the feasibility of allowing horses to go unshod, is apt to consider the advocate of such an innovation. Lieutenant PArkhurst is an old artillery officer, who has made study of the horse's foot and leg a matter of closest observation, covering series of years and upon all sorts of animals. After an ela- borats description of the anatomy of @ horse's foot, Lieutenant Parkhurst continues:
 Oar claim is, therefore, that even the sim- plest shoe applied in the most rational man. ner cannot be used without injury to the foot. Fleming recognizes this fact in his Practical Horseshoeing," but he still per sists in using the shoe as the lesser of the two evils, maintaining that the foot must be shod to stand the wear and tear of the work. He utterly ignores nature in the treatment of the foot. He assumes that the foot cannot stand going unshod, not because he has tried and failed with hoofs properly prepared, but because be never sees . foot unless 1t Is one that has been shod, has been abused by shoe ing, and has therefore been put into such 6 condition as to be unable at first to work without it. Such an idea as making the hoofs hard would appear to have never been entertained by him, and seeing that the horse with cast shoe, or his shoes just re- moved. always goes lame, he argues that the shoe is necessary to prevent 1ameness. Whereas our claim is that the hoof needs no such protection if nationally and naturally treated, and therefore all shoes are an un- mixed evil.
 It is urged that even though unnecessary on bare ground, the horse must be Trough" shod to work on the icy roads of winter. It has been abundantlY proved that the horse slippery ground than the best rough -shod horse that ever stepped. Having had per- sonal experience on this point, we will tell of one case. Being the fortunate possessor of a horse that had never been cursed by knife or shoe, rode him daily in the dead of winter to and from the river where ice was being cut The ground was covered with ice. The ride was at hard gallop, and some- times at a run, back and forth repeatedly way beaten road. The bare-footed horse never slipped or showed any hesitancy in taking the ioe His hard sharp hoofs cut into the ice as deeply as any calkin, his frog bore upon the ice as firmly as rubber pad, and his stride was as free and fearless as though on bare ground One day this horse got the best of his rider and started on run across the Platte river on comparatively thin foe. It was neither time nor place to do anything else but run, and with whip and spur awsy | we went to get across without breaking 1 through. It was a novel and not particular l ly agreeable experience; but 1t taught les 1 son how horse could travel on smooth ice
 barefooted, for there was. never slip ol
 slide, but the frsest of running.
 It will be objected if what has been said
 above is true, why do we then shoe oul I horsesi If our reasons as to the first sho,
 are accepted, we see at once why the shoe
 having once been put on and our horses foo
 forced to an artificial condition, 1t become necessary to keep on shoeing. For in tn,
 general case our necessities do not give u
 time to let nature undue the mischief VI
 have wrought. Fsshien, conservation an'