FEEDING OF DOGS. 167 



Feeding of Dogs. 



This is an important subject, as upon the judicious feeding* 

 of these animals much of their health and comfort depends ; 

 and, by injudicious feeding", very many of their complaints 

 are brought on. It is a curious fact, that the want of food, 

 and the excess of it, should both produce the same disease. 

 It is very seldom that a dog is badly fed for a considerable 

 length of time, but that he contracts mange; and it is also as 

 seldom that a dog is long permitted to eat to excess, but that 

 he also becomes mangy. However, if the same cleanliness 

 and care were to be observed in both cases, the lean dog 

 would have the least mange, and his would also prove much 

 more easy of cure. 



To feed judiciously, the physiology of digestion should be 

 understood. All the juices of the body, and indeed all the 

 solids likewise, are furnished from the blood. These juices 

 are in a continual state of waste, and the solids are in a con- 

 tinual state of wear ; both of which {i, e. the waste and the 

 wear) take place in proportion to the exertion nsed. There 

 must, therefore, exist some means of recruiting- this waste of 

 the fluids, and some means of repairing- this wear of the 

 solids. Nature has intended that these ends should be 

 brought about by food, consisting of solid and fluid sub- 

 stances taken into the mouth, which are there masticated and 

 broken down into small masses by the teeth, and mixed into 

 a paste with the saliva, by which it is rendered fit to be acted 

 upon, after it has passed from the mouth into the stomach by 

 the act of swallowing, 



Being received into the stomach, it there meets with a 

 strong solvent agent, called gastric juice ; by mixing with 

 which it becomes animalized, and, in fact, wholly altered. 

 In a complete pultaceous mass, called chyme, it is passed into 

 the bowels, where there are little vessels that strain and suck 

 up such fluid parts as are fitted for nourishing the body, and 

 pass it forwards in very minute streams into glands, called 



