88 BREEDING IN BITCHES. 



certain intervals, as six, seven, or eight months, as confine- 

 ment or hig-hly stimulating* food may hasten the sexual excite- 

 ment*. 



The heat or cesti^um of bitches is the consequence of a 

 sympathetic action between all the organs concerned in ge- 

 neration, which, at these times, become more highly sus- 

 ceptible and vascular : this shews itself by a swelling of the 

 external parts, and a discharge from the vulva. There are 

 likewise strong marks of general excitement throughout the 

 body ; the plethoric and irritable state of which is such, that 

 those bitches that have been before subject to fits, are now 

 peculiarly liable to them ; and convulsions often appear at 

 this time in those that have not before been affected by them. 

 It is evident, therefore, that the precautions of cooling- food, 

 judicious exercise, and opening medicines, are necessary at 

 these periods, for the young and delicate particularly; and they 

 are still more so for such bitches as are intended to be de- 

 barred from the dog ; for, in these latter cases, that excite- 

 ment remains long in action, which yields easily to the 

 satiety of sexual intercourse. It is not, however, prudent, 

 for several reasons connected with the health of the animals, 

 to prevent females from breeding. Nature almost invariably 

 punishes extraordinary deviations from her established laws, 

 of which the reproductive system is one of the most import- 

 ant. Breeding, therefore, is so much a healthy and necessary 

 process, that bitches debarred from it rarely remain unaffected 

 by disease, and more especially those whose confined and 

 luxurious lives require the various outlets to the superabund- 

 ance of the system, that are opened during the processes of 

 breeding and rearing of young. In such, barrenness is par- 

 ticularly hurtful, and greatly assists in bringing on, sooner 

 or later, enormous and diseased collections of fat either uni- 



* It has been attempted to bring on heat in bitches by stimulating injec- 

 tions, and it now and then succeeds : but as it is an unnatural process, and 

 as the constitutional sympathy cannot be supposed to be so fully excited as to 

 produce a general consent of parts, impregnation does not always follow the 

 intercourse, and, when it does, the progeny are usually unhealthy. 



