RUBBER HORSESHOES.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XIII, Issue 754, 18 August 1904, Page 11

RUBBER HORSESHOES.

When the rubber horseshoe pad first made its appearance several years ago, some looked with doubt on its utility, others viewed it as a luxury in hoof wear and a few accepted it as a thing long wanted, says the “ Breeder and Horseman. ’ It took hundreds of years to have the word of Aristotle that the globe was round, accepted. The faith of the men who first accepted pads as a good thing and the makers’ faith in the necessity and the utility of this soft but substantial method of shoeing was strong enough to cause them to spend fortunes in their perfection. These have waited hardly more than a decade to have their principles not only accepted but applauded. Pads as an article of hoof wear are a source of untold pleasure to “ man’s noblest friend ” and of profit to both shoer and owner of the horse. The great interesting subject of what is the most prolific cause of corn would hardly have excited interest if the rubber pad was in use a decade ago. But why cite a decade of years ? Corn in a horse’s foot is a hereditary character of disease as is cancer or consumption in the human being. So many horses of to-day are inheritors of the disease which inflicts their progenitors, hence we say that if the horse of a decade or more ago had his hoofs fortified against the causes which produce corn their progeny would to-day not be affected with it. The principle of pads is to supply the foot with that which has been desired, viz : Frog pressure, and in view of the character of work which every horse is now-a-days being subjected to, driven over hard streets and roads (most roads in the country are of the stony kind and quite as hard on the foot as the city pavements), corn is constantly making its appearance to the lessening of the horse’s value, for once the disease sets in, the foot is more or less liable to trouble which takes a certain value from the animal. It is therefore timely to direct attention to the immense utility and virtue of pads as a means of not only of nullifying the effects of present disease, but preventing the appearance of that which is easily possible. Pads have fulfilled their promise, they have proven their worth, they can be recommended with confidence. They are a bona-fide article of hoof wear and are no longer “ a brilliant prospect, but a magnificent realisation.”