HORSES AND HOUNDS. Ill 



wortli while to do at all. The foot bath, however, was always 

 used freely, and the brush when the hounds were dirty. Swim- 

 ming in ponds and rivers I have also heard highly extolled as 

 conducive to the health of dogs, but I cannot say that my expe- 

 rience has led me to any such conclusion, but quite to the con- 

 trary one. A cold bath or two occasio7ialli/, during the summer 

 months, can do no harm, but the practice of swimming dogs 

 often proves prejudicial to them. This I saw proved to demon- 

 stration one season with my own pack. The summer was a hot 

 one, and my old huntsman, although no water fancier himself, 

 thought it would do his pets good to have a dip every other 

 morning, or at least twice a week. He carefully avoided 

 bringing his own nose in contact with this to him obnoxious 

 element (and it would have hissed again like a red hot poker if 

 he had), iDut walking the hounds over a bridge upon which he 

 stationed the whip to prevent their returning, he called them 

 across the stream, and this was repeated two or three times each 

 morning. They had then three miles to return to the kennels, 

 by which time the hounds were tolerably if not quite dry. In 

 the autumn, after all this swimming, the hounds broke out in 

 spots, and became so mangy that they required to be dressed 

 and physicked, and again in October we were absolutely obliged 

 to stop work, and have recourse to another dressing, and the 

 free use of alterative medicines before we could get their skins 

 clean from eruptions. Several were attacked with canker in the 

 ear also, which I have always considered as a species of mange, 

 originating from the suppression of the proper secretions of the 

 body, an overheated system, the use of improper food, or 

 checked perspiration of the skin ; for, although we know that 

 dogs chielSy perspire by the tongue, yet there is always an invi- 

 sible action of the pores of the skin, which any sceptic may be 

 easily convinced of by the effluvia which arises from a mangy 

 lot of dogs huddled together in some unhealthy kennel. 



For all eruptions of the skin, mange, and canker in the ear, 

 alteratives are the chief remedy, and without their use no per- 

 manent cure can be efiected. I have used for this purpose 

 sulphur and cream of tartar, equal parts of each, antimony and 

 ^thiop's mineral, with a dose of castor oil or syrup of buckthorn 

 afterwards on the following morning. In the summer and 

 autumn months, when the weather was hot and sultry, Epsom 

 Baits were generally used in my kennels, both as medicine and 

 in smaller quantities as alteratives. 



With the month of June the holidays, or rest-time, with the 

 old hounds expired, and in July we commenced training them 

 again for the hunting season. We began with two or three 



