Horse Shoes

The term horse shoes is most commonly written horseshoes, and can pertain to shoes for a horse, or to the game " Horseshoes" Either way, one is reffering to shoes for a horse. Horse shoes have the primary purpose of protecting the horse's hoof during varying activities. A work horse may have a slightly different horseshoe from a race horse, but whatever the purpose of the horseshoe or the activity of the horse, the horseshoe is designed to protect the horse's feet.

The horse hoof is an insensitive layer on the bottom of the foot which might be compared to a human fingernail or toenail. The horseshoe is usually created and put on the horse's hoof, by a farrier, commonly called a blacksmith in earlier times. When horses were used as a means of transportation, either ridden or used to pull wagons and other means of transport, it was a common sight to see a blacksmith at the side of the road near small towns, creating horseshoes and shodding animals. Horseshoes are not now made and put on horses at the side of road in the US and other industrialized countries.

Although horses are often working animals on farms, one more often sees work done by machines, which obviously eliminates some uses for horseshoes. Horses are used regularly in some sports, however, such as polo and racing, and these horses require various types of horseshoes. Some horseshoes are made of steel, particularly those for demanding activities such as polo and western riding. These horseshoes. are particularly strong.

The horseshoes used for race horses must be as light as possible, and these horseshoes are made of aluminum. In shoeing horses for any activity, the horseshoes need to be carefully and correctly placed on the horses feet. Driving a nail into a sensitive part of the foot when horseshoes are put on the horse can result not only in pain but in crippling. In some cases horseshoes are applied with glue rather than nails.

In addition to using steel and aluminum in making horseshoes, some specialized horseshoes are made of rubber, plastic and even copper. These specialized horseshoes are fairly rare, however.

The game of horseshoes is usually played with a slightly varied design of the horseshoe. It consists of tossing the horseshoes at a peg stuck in the ground. It was once a regular pasttime in rural areas. The game of horseshoes is rarely if ever seen in urban and suburban areas....it is an unsophisticated pasttime of earlier times, when the rather romantic clip clop of horses' feet on pavement or hard dirt roads was a common sound.

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