Excerpt from The Complete Guide to Blacksmithing: Horseshoeing, Carriage and Wagon Building and Painting It is certainly true that every owner and driver of horses, as well as every person who professes to be a horseshoer, should have a thorough knowledge of the horse's foot and the requirements in the way of shoeing. But how many do! Even farriers know no more of the horse's hoof, and the scientific require ments for obtaining the best results in any given case, than they have been able to pick up in the exercise of their trade. This kind of knowl edge is notoriously imperfect. It will never improve. And owners and drivers are for the most part so ignorant that they could not tell a front foot from a hind foot, or tell the differ ence between a job of shoeing that would make a horse lame in a week, and one that would cure the same lameness in even less time. And this ignorance costs the owner many a hard earned dollar. No better investment can be made than a little time spent in the study of the horse's feet, by the help of a really scientific manual. But it is better not to study any book at all than one that is unreliable. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.