XVIII. SCALPING.
This is a very dangerous fault. When a horse is making speed and begins scalping, he is unbalanced quite bad, he needs changing before being speeded again for if you don’t he or she will get rough gaited, or will begin carrying the hind leg between front ones, hopping, or trying to run with hind action. The first thing to do is to examine the hind feet, you are likely to find the hind feet a lot higher on the inside than on the outside nine times out of ten. Some horses will begin scalping after their feet get too long. In horses with excessive action, carrying too much weight in front will cause scalping at speed. Horses with very little action in front and not carrying weight enough will be liable to scalp at speed. When shoeing for scalping use a square toe shoe, light or heavy, as may be required by the front action.
Feet all out of proportion and at the wrong angle and not level will cause scalping. Now if the animal has very little hock action and mostly stifle action, I would lower and shorten the toes of the hind feet as much as possible, use a square toe shoe and raise the heels with a side calk, this will shorten the stride and by adding some weight to the hind shoe it will increase hock action. Most all scalping is done with front or outside toe of the front shoe coming in contact with the coronet of hind foot. It hurts the horse so much that he will try to find some way to avoid it; some trainers use a gaiting pole to prevent the horse from going crooked in the shafts because of this fault.