This is a very annoying fault and the same rules to remedy it do not apply to all horses, for what will stop one may not stop another. Most all forging will be done jogging, or going an ordinary road gait. From forging comes the scalping which is very dangerous when the horse begins to brush along, as scalping creates rough and bad gaited horses. There are many horses that will forge or scalp going slow in the same shoes that suit them for speed. It is hard to shoe all horses with a set of shoes that will suit the horse, the driver and a faulty gait at varying rates of speed, all at the same time. Horses that are _low gaited_ in front that forge jogging, need as a rule, a lot more weight in their front shoes. Horses that go high gaited with lots of knee action in front that forge require a light shoe. Forgers usually have excessive action either in front or behind. Locate the faulty end, see if the horse has too much action in front and not enough behind, or if he has too much behind and not enough in front. Get a line on his gait before you make any changes, perhaps you may not have to change but one end of him to either increase or decrease action. Weight in the shoe is the important factor applied to a perfectly balanced foot, whether it is a front foot or a hind foot. You can add weight to the front or hind feet, as may be desired, to increase action, or decrease the weight to decrease the action at either end. Now right here I will say, a horse jogging hardly feels a change of weight of one, two or three ounces, but will show the effect of five or six ounces from the start. Do not be afraid to apply a heavy shoe to hind feet for if his action requires it to prevent forging, the horse will like it better and so will you.
In adding weight to hind feet you will be increasing the hock action and in some horses it will take considerable weight to do it; horses going an ordinary road gait will not feel one, two or three ounces increase of weight in hind shoes. Horses stepping fast as a rule do not do any forging and, of course, the lighter they can go the better. There are many horses—fast trotters—that forge or scalp jogging, that would go cleaner or purer by applying a four-ounce toe weight, some may need a five-ounce weight, lots of them have to be jogged too fast in order to prevent forging or scalping, when perhaps a toe weight would be the remedy. A horse going a 2:10 gait will feel the effects of a one or two ounce weight as much as one going a slow gait would feel the effects of four or five ounces.
