60 A MANUAL OF TOY DOGS 



The " new " disease, commonly called the Stuttgart 

 disease, which has created so much excitement among 

 dog owners during the last year or two, and is of the 

 nature of gastritis, or inflammation of the lining mem- 

 brane of the stomach, spreading upwards and down- 

 wards, calls in some ways for quite a different treatment 

 to that of the typhoid form of distemper. They are 

 alike in this : that a teaspoonful or so of iced champagne 

 or iced soda and milk, will sometimes be retained where 

 nothing else will, but in gastric catarrh, or gastritis, 

 the patient must not be allowed to drink water, or to 

 make the slightest exertion. 



It may, perhaps, be as well to state what, I suppose, 

 is not yet known to all dog owners namely, the fact 

 that it is by no means a necessity for a toy, or any 

 other dog for that matter, to have distemper. Like 

 scarlet fever in the human subject, distemper may occur 

 in a dog's life, or may not. The child takes scarlet fever 

 if it has been in the way of infection, and the dog dis- 

 temper if the contagion has been conveyed to it either 

 by some person who has been near an affected dog, by 

 that dog itself, or by some article on which infected dis- 

 charges of any kind have been deposited. 



The one quarrel we all have with shows is that they 

 certainly offer opportunities of spreading distemper to 

 people who do not consider its existence in their kennels 

 a sufficient reason for withholding entries, and carry the 

 contagion with them, although the dogs they exhibit may 

 be in themselves unaffected. An old-fashioned piece of 

 advice in distemper, and one always given, was that at 

 the outset of the disease a dose of castor oil, or some other 

 aperient, should be administered. I have no hesitation 

 at all in saying that whereas castor oil to the dog 

 a violent irritant purgative has carried off many and 

 many a puppy and delicate adult that, if not so weakened 

 just when all the reserve forces of strength were most 

 needed, might have pulled through, this practice is a 

 most mistaken one, to say the least of it. If there is 

 any probability of there being any collection in the 



