4 MANAGEMENT OF HOUNDS. 



as the beginning of a good run. He will never, however, 

 neglect an opportunity of acquiring knowledge, even in 

 such a trivial matter as dressing a horse, if he is a man 

 of sense. 



I shall now proceed to instruct my tyro on all that 

 relates to the kennel department, and as a first step we 

 must build a house before we can live in it. Many 

 think anything will do for hounds, or dogs as they are 

 often contemptuously called, but as all our sport de- 

 pends upon the health and strength of the hound, the 

 first consideration is a healthy kennel. This should be 

 placed upon some high and dry situation (all high situa- 

 tions not being necessarily dry ones) ; the building should 

 face the south, and there should be no large trees near 

 it. To hunt three or four days a week you will require 

 about forty couples of hounds, according to the country. 

 The lodging rooms should be four in number, by which 

 you will have a dry floor for the hounds to go into every 

 morning (the pack in the hunting season being in two 

 divisions), instead of its being washed down, whilst the 

 hounds are left shivering in the cold on a bleak winter's 

 day, which I have seen done, when the huntsman has 

 been too busy to walk them out during this process. 



Nothing is more prejudicial to hounds than damp 

 lodging rooms, a sure cause of rheumatism and mange, 

 to which dogs are peculiarly liable. I have seen them 

 affected by rheumatism in various ways, and totally in- 

 capacitated from working ; sometimes they are attacked 

 in the loins, but more often in the shoulders, which some 

 huntsmen call the kennel-lameness, and so in reality it 

 is, the kennel-lameness proceeding either from a damp 

 situation, damp lodging rooms, or damp straw — perhaps 



