1.3
When testing the feet first look to the hoofs. For it makes a great difference in the quality of the feet if they are thick rather than thin. Next you must not fail to notice whether the hoofs are high both in front and behind, or low. For high hoofs have the frog, as it is called, well off the ground; but flat hoofs tread with the strongest and weakest part of the foot simultaneously, like a bow-legged man. Moreover, Simon says that the ring, too, is a clear test of good feet: and he is right; for a hollow hoof rings like a cymbal in striking the ground.M. Bourgelat, in his preface to the second volume of Les Elemens Hippiatriques reprehends this remark as trifling and false; and if our author is to be understood literally, the criticism is certainly just.—Berenger 1.221. Yet it is unlikely that Simon and X. were both mistaken.
1.4
Having begun here, we will proceed upwards by successive steps to the rest of the body.
1.4
The bones (of the pastern) above the hoofs and below the fetlocks should not be too upright, like a goat’s: such legs give too hard a tread, jar the rider, and are more liable to inflammation. Nor yet should the bones be too low,The pasterns (of the hackney) should neither be too oblique, which bespeaks weakness: nor too straight, which wears the horse out and is unpleasant to the rider.—Blair in Loudon’s Agriculture. else the fetlocks are likely to become bare and sore when the horse is ridden over clods or stones.
