PREDISPOSING CAUSES 115 



ally rove the fields in search of such food as they may find. Most 

 of these animals are harmless, and at the same time worthless 

 mongrels, with few redeeming quaUties to warrant their being kept 

 about the place. 



These dogs are attracted by dead animal carcasses, and many 

 of them seem to have a particular adaptability for ferreting out 

 places where a carcass has been recently buried or improperly 

 burned, and will dig up the bones and drag them away with them 

 for half a mile or more, and carry them over into some other field 

 and there devour the meat and gnaw upon the bones. 



It frequently happens that the field to which the bones are 

 taken is one in which a herd of healthy hogs are running. These 

 healthy hogs devour the remains of the feast left by the dog, and 

 thus become themselves infected, with the result that an epidemic 

 of cholera breaks out in ten to fifteen days, and the farmer often 

 wonders how in the world his hogs could have become infected. It 

 is little things like this which often explain the cause of an outbreak 

 where the owner has used every possible precaution to avoid expo- 

 sure of his animals. 



While riding over Pettis County, Mo., during the summer of 

 1913, I repeatedly found dogs crossing the road from an infected 

 pasture, carrying with them a bone or other remains of some dead 

 cholera animal, which was being dragged home by the dog to feed 

 upon. Almost invariably within a few days I could count upon 

 receiving notice of an outbreak of cholera on the farm which was 

 the home of the dog. 



Not only by dragging away portions of a dead carcass, but also 

 by tracking on their feet infected manure and mud, dogs may 

 prove to be the means of carrying the infection to a new farm. It 

 must always be remembered in a cholera herd that the manure 

 and urine of the sick animals is loaded with the hog-cholera virus, 

 and carrying of this manure or mud with which it has been con- 

 taminated to your feed lot will infect your hogs and result in an 

 outbreak of cholera on your farm. This is equally true, whether 

 the manure be carried by your feet, the feet of a dog, on the shoes 

 of a hog buyer or butcher, or by whatever means it may be carried. 

 Always wash your shoes thoroughly before leaving a farm on which 

 there are animals sick with cholera. 



