mud-shoen.

1846 Southern & Western Literary Messenger & Rev. 12 667/1 An appendage [sc. in fossil tracks] extending backwards from the heel eight or nine inches, and intended, apparently, like a snow-shoe, to sustain the weight of a heavy animal walking on a soft bottom. The impression of this mud-shoe resembles that of wing feathers.

1851 Harper's Mag. Dec. 96/1 Griff in his glazed hat, and short blouse, and ponderous mud-shoes, is clearing a channel for the diluted muck of C— street.

1881 Littell's Living Age 22 Jan. 230/1 He is slipping about in treacherous mud, in a pair of ‘mud-shoes’, or boards that are attached to his boots like sandals.

1959 A. Hardy Fish & Fisheries xvi. 303 The tractors..will..have buoyancy tanks so that they are light enough to skim the bottom on their mud-shoes without sinking in.

1984 J. Seymour Forgotten Arts (1985) 105/1 I used to shoot duck among the tidal backwaters of estuaries on the east coast of England... We used to construct mud shoes called plashers, which we laced to our boots.

2000 Denver Post (Nexis) 15 Oct. t10 Hinged wooden ‘mud shoes’, which enabled ninja to walk across castle moats.

1940 Brooklyn Eagle 7 May 15/1 (caption) About 25 percent of winning horses are shod in steel... The mud shoe in steel differs from aluminum.

1954 Mem. Ghost Pine Homesteaders (Ghost Pine Community Group, Three Hills, Alberta) 119 A chap..breaking a particularly wet piece of ground, made oval shaped hardwood mud shoes which he fastened to his horses' shoes to keep the horses from miring.

1969 E. H. Pinto Treen 93 Elmwood horse mud shoes, with iron staples,..were used to give a horse better bearing in the cranberry swamps of Wisconsin.

2001 St. Petersburg (Florida) Times (Nexis) 3 Jan. 10 Farmers bagged their mules' feet in burlap so they wouldn't bog down in the wet muck. Plowing mules also wore ‘mud shoes’..The wooden flats, 8 inches square and about 2 inches thick, were clamped to the beasts' hooves.