^02 AGE OF THE DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 



DETERMINATION OF AGE FROM OTHER SIGNS. 



The young dog is born with its eyelids closed; these do 

 not open until the ninth or tenth and sometimes as late as the 

 fifteenth day. 



Young dogs have heads wliich are large in proportion to 

 their size, and in which the cranium is large in proportion to 

 the size of the face. 



Old dogs become gray around the nose, eyes, and forehead ; 

 their noses become larger, and the skin over the whole face 

 becomes wrinkled. The lips become everted and show the red 

 mucous membrane along their irregular borders. The skin, at 

 the ordinary points of pressure in decubitus, especially in large 

 dogs, becomes denuded of hair and develops an epithelial growth 

 which is almost horny in character ; so that in old dogs we 

 find callous points at the elbow, hock, salient points of the 

 pelvis, and sometimes on the shoulder. They are apt to develop 

 eczema and other skin troubles of a chronic nature. Frequent 

 epithelial tumors appear over the surface of the body. In the 

 old male growths on the penis and in the old female tumors in 

 the mammary glands are not rare. Deafness, without apparent 

 lesion in the ears, and cataracts, with a congested condition of 

 the conjunctiva, occur. Paralysis of the hind-legs, from no 

 evident cause, may end the old dog's life. 



