We have presented articles that triggered doubts and questions a number of times in the past. It is up to you, dear readers, to make up your own minds, to test ideas, and to retain what proves correct. Farriery is not a science, but must rely on science to advance. The famous 'golden ratio' that is found, according to certain analysts, in the Pyramid of Cheops (a.k.a. as the Great Pyramid of Giza; 2600 BCE) and was mentioned by the mathematician Euclid (around 300 BCE) corresponds, according to certain theories, to the ideal of beauty. Many architects, painters, and sculptors have applied it in their masterpieces. However, might it apply to living things and thus be the key to farriery?Should it be seen as embodying perfection in the horse's foot? The golden number, this 'heaven-sent' ideal, according to Luca Pacioli (a Franciscan friar of the Renaissance), was, according to still others, raised to an aesthetic theory justified by mystical arguments - a status that was overturned by science because founded on 'groundless generalisations and incorrect hypotheses'.* Historically, the horse doubtless has the last word in the matter: Whether horses fit the golden ratio or not, they have taken part in all of humankind's adventures, sweating blood and water under harness, on the battlefield, in agriculture, in transport, etc.,
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