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EQUINE CONTORTIONIST Horse in Pasture Puts Hoof in Mouth, but Finds Difficulty Performing "As You Were." An odd accident in which a horse had one of his hind feet so fastened in his mouth as to be totally unable to extricate it is described in a letter sent to the editor of American Turf Register in 1831 : After I had turned my horse into a small pasture in the rear of my house, declares the author of the correspondence, I heard him fall and immediately afterward groan and struggle with so much apparent desperation that I hurried out and found him on his left side with the whole of the right hind hoof in ! hi3 mouth. He was a horse of uncommon spirit and action and his efforts to j relieve himself seemed like paroxysms of madness. , I sent for my nearest neighbor, who came with two of his negro men and, with the aid of an ax helve for prying the jaws, we succeeded in relieving him after working hard for half an hour. It is difficult to imagine how it occurred, unless that, in biting at the fetlock joint, the leg passed through his teeth until the hoof was brought into his mouth, at which moment he must have fallen. The fore teeth were sunken into the flesh just above and a little to the left of the hoof and every effort he made sunk them deeper. His fore teeth and the upper part of the hoof were like the locks of a hoop and as he could make no effort with his neck without making a corresponding one with his leg, distended as all his nerves and muscles were, the force he used increased his difficulty.
