Use defines shoeing

Abstract

T he discussion of the barefoot movement fascinates me: my father was a professor at the School of Veterinary Medicine, LM University, Munich, Germany, and head of the Department for Hoof and Claw Diseases, Horse Shoeing and Harnessing. This department included a professional school for master farriers. Only candidates who had worked six years as journey men were admitted to 6-month courses, followed by a rigorous examination by a commission from the farriers’ guild and government experts. This department included also a remarkable museum, which exhibited historic specimens. This collection vanished in an air raid in 1943. Although I did not follow in father’s (professional) footsteps (the department was abolished after WWII), my interest in the subject has always been high and therefore I have tried to follow Dr Strasser’s mission. What strikes me are the opinions voiced and the judgments made without taking into consideration that today’s equine industry is strikingly different from that of our parents and from the industry at large of the last millennium. Today, horses are part of the leisure industry and only a small section of them are performance animals. But until the combustion engine replaced horsepower, the horse had to perform on increasingly hard surfaces: roads were paved not only in communities but also between towns. Cavalry had to move fast over long distances and still had to be ready for battle. As I was told as a student, Cesar in his famous books about the wars in Gaul (now France), complained repeatedly about the inability of his (barefoot) cavalry to enter battle decisively because the horses’ hooves were sore from the long distances they had to cover to reach the battlefield (unfortunately, my Latin today is not good enough to check the original reports). In our entrance hall, a map from 1826 is displayed, showing the postal services provided in Central Europe at the time: for the transportation of people, mail, and goods by normal or express mail. It shows all the mail coach