1 6 KENNEL SECRETS. 



All this in relation to man's diet, while seemingly for- 

 eign, has a bearing on the diet of dogs, for he is singularly- 

 inclined to consider that their requirements are much the 

 same as his own. But such reasoning is not always sound, 

 for the dog is of a different order of animals and of dif- 

 ferent structure, and although he has accommodated him- 

 self to other than his natural diet there must be limits to 

 his powers in this direction. Nor does it follow that if one 

 man is right and his dog is doing well on some peculiar 

 diet all others who feed differently are in the wrong. 



There is an old saw, "What is one man's meat is 

 another's poison." Nearly all mankind to whom they 

 are accessible can safely eat strawberries, but still now 

 and then is encountered a person on whom they bring 

 out a most annoying rash. Nature's first food for every 

 child is animal — milk — and yet there are not a few peo- 

 ple who are made ill by it. The egg is certainly one of 

 the most harmless of foods, nevertheless instances are on. 

 record where the merest trace of it has caused con- 

 vulsions. 



But ignoring these idiosyncrasies, which are fortunately 

 but rarely encountered in man, while if they exist in dogs 

 they can scarcely be any more common, two persons sel- 

 dom meet who are fond of and can digest with equal ease 

 the same kinds of foods, and such being the case indi- 

 vidual peculiarities surely must occur occasionally among 

 their humble companions so often fed from the table. 



Another fact which has a bearing on the question under 

 discussion is, that the immediate results of diet are by no 

 means to be accepted as final. In other words, because a 

 man or a dog apparently keeps healthy and strong for 

 several years on nearly all meat or on nearly all vege- 

 tables, it does not follow that the chosen diet is a 

 suitable one, for it might be doing harm and hidden 



