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The chain kennel, where only one or two dogs are kept, is usually adopted. Given a good, roomy, strong, hard wood barrel, anyone can make a comfortable kennel out of it. Thus scour it well first, and let it dry; have both ends closed up, and in the side near to one end proceed to saw out a square hole big enough for the animal's easy ingress and exit. Thus you have at once a nice kennel, free from objectionable draughts; and when well lined with straw, it is all that could be desired. The square carpenter-made kennel has usually the door in the gable. This is most objectionable. By all means have the opening at the side, and have the back to open when desirable, for the convenience of cleaning.

Kennel-bedding ought to be abundant. Quite half-fill the barrel or boxit will last the longer. Dogs greatly appreciate a good bed. Change it whenever damp, and change it at least once a fortnight, whether damp or not. The best bedding for winter is oaten or rye straw; the best for summer, wheaten straw. I do not think shavings so good; and hay is bad, because it fills the coat with dust and obnoxious insects. Sprinkling the straw well with a decoction of quassia wood-two handfuls of chips steeped for a day or two in half a bucket of water-prevents fleas. Damping the dog's coat with this decoction kills these and other vermin. A little turpentine sprinkled over the straw has the same effect. It is a good plan in large kennels to put down a good layer of peat-earth: it is a cleanly, wholesome, deodorising substratum for the bed.

Outdoor kennel dogs should always have an abundance of pure fresh water for drinking. The pan should be a broad-bottomed one, not easily knocked over. The water should be changed every morning, and placed where it shall be out of the rays of the sun. In winter care should be taken that it does not get frozen.

A dog should be fed twice a day. A dog should have his principal mealwith a run to follow-at 4 P.M. in winter, and at 5 in summer. Variety and change from day to day are most essential. Spratt's biscuits, dry or steeped, and mixed with the liquor that fresh meat or fish has been boiled in, with now and then oatmeal porridge, make a good staple of diet. Bread-crusts steeped may be substituted once a week. Meat should be given; but unless the dog has abundant exercise, too much does harm. Boiled greens should be mixed with the food at least twice a week; but they should be well mashed, else our friend will edge them on one side with his nose and leave them. Paunches are good as a change: so are well-boiled lights and sheep's head and broth. The head should be boiled to a jelly; and no kind of meat should be given raw, except now and then a morsel of bullock's liver or milt, to act as a laxative. Never give raw lights-they carry down air into the stomach, and may produce fatal results. Potatoes, rice and most gardenroots are good, and the scraps of the table generally. Much caution should be used in giving bones. On no account give a dog fish or game or chicken bones. Milk, when it can be afforded, is very good for dogs, and buttermilk is a most wholesome drink for them. Let everything you give to a dog be cleanly and well cooked, and do not entertain the now exploded notion that anything is good enough for a dog. Whatever a dog leaves should be thrown to the fowls, and not presented to him again, for the animal is naturally dainty.

If you want a dog to remain healthy, great pains must be taken that, both personally and in all his surroundings, he is kept clean. His food and his

water should be pure and fresh; the kennel he lies in should always have clean bedding, and be periodically scrubbed and disinfected. Even the inside of his leather collar should be kept sweet and clean. He ought to be brushed, if not combed, every morning with an ordinary dandy brush. This not only keeps the coat clean and free from unsightly matting, but encourages the growth of the "feather," as it is called. He should be washed once a fortnight.

Washing a dog may seem a simple matter; but there is a right way and a wrong way of doing it, for all that. Here are the directions I should give to a tyro.

Choose a fine day. Wash him in the morning, so that he may not run the risk of catching cold or inflammation, by going to bed with a damp coat. Place small dogs in the tub, big ones beside it. Take the soap in one hand, and pour the water with the other over the fingers as you lather. The water must be warm, but not hot; the lather made on the jacket abundant. Leave the head till the last, else your friend will treat you to a shower-bath by shaking himself. After he is well lathered and rubbed, squeeze and wash out all the soap, first with warm, and finally with cold water. Next give a douche-bath in the shape of a bucket or two of cold water all over; and let him run about a minute or two to shake himself. Now take a rough towel and dry him as well as possible, and then take him out immediately for a run. You thus get the blood into circulation, and there is no fear of his catching cold. Let him have a bit of biscuit when he returns from his walk; and afterwards turn him into his kennel amongst good clean straw.

Cold and damp and draughts are very injurious to a dog's health; and it is worth while remembering that if a dog has to be exposed for a time to the wet without the power of running about and keeping warm, he ought to have something to eat. Nearly all inflammations in dogs are caused by exposure to cold and wet while the animals are fasting.

In washing dogs, the mistake of using strong alkaline soaps should be avoided. Some people use ordinary soft soap. Nothing tends more to destroy the gloss of the coat. Use only the mildest of soaps, Naldire's or Calvert's; and if the dog be a very tiny one, the yolk of egg is better even than soap.

The better to protect outdoor dogs from wet or draught, it is a good plan to have the kennel movable, so that the back of it may be placed against the wind or rain. If this cannot be done, let it face always south or south and west. Be most careful that in summer the poor animal has means of protection against the direct rays of the sun. It is bad enough for a dog to have to lie out all night in frost, but it is ten times worse for him to be exposed, for even a couple of hours, to a strong summer sun.

In feeding, always place the food in a clean basin or dish; on no account throw it on the ground, for dirt is as injurious to the health of a dog as it is to that of any other animal.

Exercise is most essential to the well-being of a dog. A boy who keeps his dog on chain from one month's end to another, ought himself to undergo six weeks of precisely the same kind of punishment. If we would have our dogs healthy and happy, comfortable and good-tempered, we must give them their freedom for some time each day. It is better to take them for a good run quite away from home.

People sometimes put a bit of brimstone in a dog's water-dish, by way of

keeping him pure and healthy. A pebble wonld do as much good, for the brimstone does not dissolve. But a little sulphur now and then in the food is a capital thing; a little gunpowder is better, containing, as it does, nitre, sulphur, and charcoal.

Now just a word in conclusion about PUPPIES. Never leave more than five or six for the dam to bring up; and if they are a valuable breed or strain, and likely to sell, be prepared with a foster-mother, lest more than six be born. For the first three weeks the mother attends to them. After that, they ought to be taught gradually, to lap warm milk, first with a little sugar. After a month, a little boiled corn-flour should be added; and at this age, commence to wean gradually, by letting them have day by day more food and less mother's milk. Complete the weaning during the seventh week, but as I said gradually, for sake of both pups and dam. Let them have a large shed to run in, and let it be a foot-deep in straw, and always clean and dry. In good weather, the pups ought to be as much as possible in the open air. There is nothing brings them on so well as playing in the sunshine. Pups must have toys, such as large bones, boots, &c. It is wonderful the amount of fun they get out of such toys, and the amount of good such romping does them. Gradually let the food be thicker, and begin soon to give them a little broth as well as milk. Feed four times a day, till the pups are three months old; then three times a day till they are eight month's old, then twice. Be careful with them about teething-time-that is, from the fourth to the seventh month, during which time they shed the

milk-teeth and acquire the permanent ones. Never let pups get wet, if possible; but if dirty wash them well. While the mother is suckling, feed her well on the most nutritious diet, five, six or seven times a day.

DESTROYING PUPPIES AND OLD DOGS.-The most humane way, and that now generally recognized as such, is to give the old dog enough syrup of chloral in water to put him sound asleep, and to chloroform him when he is thus insensible. Puppies should be chloroformed; the chloral in their case being unnecessary. Drowning is a cruel death, and prussic acid is uncertain. As to shooting, it may be sure enough, but one naturally revolts against the idea of spilling blood.

The commoner CAUSES OF ILLNESS in the dog are- —(1) Mismanagement in the matter of diet; want of regularity in the time of feeding; want of variety; the too constant use of biscuits or meat instead of a mixed diet; unwholesome or stale food; too little food; and indiscriminate feeding, or the abuse of dainties. (2) Impure water, which often produces dire illnesses in the dog. (3) A damp unwholesome kennel-dry straw thrown over wet, for instance, or a floor of cold stone or brick. (4) Uncleanliness of kennel, of coat, or surroundings. (5) Want of exercise. (6) Exposure to cold while the dog is at rest. (7) Exposure to wet while fasting; and (8) Both of the latter combined, as when a poor dog is left cold and hungry to shiver in the rain at a door-step.

The morning bath, a bucket douche, or in fine weather, a short swim in the sea or a running stream, is a valuable agent for maintaining a dog in health. It is well known to dog-breeders that dogs that are happy seldom ail; that those who are not permitted free intercourse with their masters or owners, often do; and that one can generally tide a puppy over all its baby ailments by keeping it dry, warm, clean, and well amused.

DISTEMPER.-It is a mistake to believe that all dogs must have distemper,

Young dogs about the teething months are more subject to it than at any other period; but old dogs are sometimes attacked also, and a dog may even have distemper twice during his lifetime. There is no such a thing as a specific for the cure of distemper.

This disease is caused really by a poison afloat in the blood, which Nature seeks to eliminate through the mucous membranes that line the air-passages, beginning with those in the nose and pharynx, giving rise to the exudation of water first, then mucus: hence the running at the nose and eyes, which is usually the first symptom that draws attention to the dog's condition. But before this the animal has been ailing; there has been loss of appetite, probably shivering, a dry staring coat, and emaciation. A young dog may have cold and cough with running at the nose; but if there be no wasting, danger is not to be feared; and in this case, if you give him a dose of castor oil in the morning, with from a teaspoonful to a table-spoonful of Mindererus' spirit and a little sweet nitre at night, a dry warm bed and a lower diet for a day or two, you will have him all right again. But if the dog is noticeably thinner, with a distressing cough, and pinched, pained appearance of face, the sooner a skilled "vet." sees him the better. Opiate cough mixtures and diarrhoea mixtures may be needed; but in any case a dog must be kept in a warm dry apartment, with, if necessary, a fire in the room; he must be covered up if cold; his bed must be soft and easy and while he is kept scrupulously clean, he must get all the fresh air possible, and sunshine too. His food must be light at first, while there is fever, and while the inside of the thighs and stomach is hot. He must be fed little and often, and have cooling, soothing drink and fresh water, which he may lap ad libitum. When the fever abates, let the food be more nourishing-beef-tea, eggs, and probably a little raw minced meat. If there be much prostration, give good port frequently, or even a little brandy-and-water. But never overdo your dosing either with food or physic. Quinine is valuable in the latter stages of the complaint, with gentle exercise, but no excitement or fatigue.

INFLAMMATIONS of all kinds are ushered in by rigors or some degree of shivering, with great heat of skin, dry nose, injected eyes, staring coat, want of appetite, great thirst, general uneasiness, and derangement of the ordinary functions. The dog ought to be removed at once to a warm, comfortable, well-ventilated apartment. An outhouse will do, if it be free from damp and draughts. A dose of castor oil, with one-half the quantity of syrup of buckthorn, and a few drops of laudanum in it, will do good; and no more can be done until the "vet." comes. In inflammations, as in distemper, nursing and care are half the battle; but in carrying out the treament, the animal is to be disturbed as little as possible. Quietness and rest are imperative.

DIARRHEA in dogs is often a dangerous complaint. Keep the animal as quiet as possible. Give just one mild dose of castor oil; then give the chalk mixture of the shops, with a few drops of laudanum in each dose. This should be given four or six times a day, if needed. Food: no meat, only farinaceous diet and milk. If weakness prevails, eggs, beef-tea, port wine, and brandy.

COLIC. This is a painful illness, distinguished from inflammation in this way -the pain is nor constant, but so extreme at times as to make the dog rush about howling; there is little if any fever, and rubbing gives relief. Give castor oil at once, and thereafter an anti-spasmodic of some kind; brandyand-water hot, with spice in it, is always handy, and several doses should be

given. Foment the stomach well in the intervals with hot water. An opium pill will afterwards do good; and the dog should be kept very quiet for a few days.

IN COLDS AND COUGHS, and all febrile disorders, a cooling mixture can be prepared by mixing Mindererus' spirit, sweet nitre, and a little chlorate of potash, in water sweetened with glycerine, and giving a dose proportionate to the dog's size three times a day.

NOTES ON MEDICINES.-A dog of collie size will require about as much as a man; bigger dogs more, smaller less. A dog will stand more aloes and opium than it would be safe to give to a human being, but less mercury. Nux vomica is a dangerous drug to give to a dog. Paregoric, tincture or syrup of squills, and Friar's balsam are capital remedies for coughs. Opium should be given with caution, and its effects carefully watched. Chloral has found its way into the canine pharmacopoeia, and is at times useful in conquering spasm and allaying excitement. It is dangerous.

Dandelion extract is a capital liver tonic, and may be made the vehicle for the exhibition of most other tonics, such as quinine or the extracts of gentian or quassia. The last is a capital bitter and anthelmintic tonic, and ought to be better known than it is.

FITS are common in dogs. If not the result of distemper, poisoning, or some nervous ailment, they are brought on by errors in diet and treatment. The cause should be sought for, and removed. Give an aperient once or twice a week, castor oil or Pullna water, good food, the bath, gentle exercise, and a tonic, from one to five grains of sulphate of zinc in a few grains of extract of dandelion twice a day. Beware of excitement.

FOR INDIGESTION, rhubarb, ginger and aloes may be used; but get the dog into better form; if lean, feed well; if fat, give aperients and exercise; but, in any case, regulate the diet, and give a morning bath.

JAUNDICE AND RHEUMATISM require the attention of the "vet.' The former is often fatal, sometimes rapidly so. Chaulmoogra pills aid in curing rheumatism; and the application of the heated flat-iron or bags of hot sand removes pain, with judicious doses of opium or paregoric.

CANKER IN THE EAR is known by the dog shaking his head, and by the exudation of badly smelling matter. It is difficult to cure, because so apt to be neglected. The dog is generally out of condition. His system should be kept cool by aperients twice a week, and plenty of well mashed greens in the food; and the animal's body should be washed once a week. A solution of ordinary green tea makes a good lotion; or either alum, sulphate of zinc, or nitrate of silver, two grains to an ounce of distilled water. Before the teaspoonful of lotion is put into the ears, to be there retained for one minute, they must be washed out with warm water-no soap. Do this twice a day with great regularity. Dry out with a soft rag.

CANKER, WORMS AND MANGE are the most common of all dog diseases, and, indeed, it is not unusual to find all three diseases combined in the same animal. It will serve every useful purpose to merely say that the parasites most commonly found in the intestines of the dog are the tapeworm and the round-worm. "Vets." are in the habit of talking about a third, which they call the "maw-worm"; but this is merely cast-off joints of the tapeworm. It must not be forgotten, however, that each of these joints is a separate individual, capable of propagating its species, and that the so-called tapeworm is in reality a conjoined association of parasites. The symptoms that

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