CHAPTER LI 



SOME COMMON AILMENTS OF THE DOG AND 

 THEIR TREATMENT 



THE experienced dog-owner has long ago realised that cleanliness, 

 wholesome food, judicious exercise and a dry, comfortable and well- 

 ventilated kennel are the surest safeguards of health, and that attention 

 to these necessaries saves him an infinitude of trouble and anxiety 

 by protecting his dogs from disease. On the first appearance of illness 

 in his kennels the wise dog-owner at once calls in the skill of a good 

 veterinary surgeon, but there are some of the minor ailments which he 

 can deal with himself whilst he ought at least to be able to recognise 

 the first symptoms of the dreaded Distemper and give first aid until the 

 vet. arrives to apply his remedies and give professional advice. 



DISTEMPER. 



Although more than one hundred years have elapsed since this 

 was first imported to this country from France, a great amount of 

 misunderstanding still prevails among a large section of dog-breeders 

 regarding its true nature and origin. The fact is, the disease came 

 to us with a bad name, for the French themselves deemed it incurable. 

 In this country the old-fashioned plan of treatment was wont to be 

 the usual rough remedies emetics, purgatives, the seton, and the 

 lancet. Failing in this, specifics of all sorts were eagerly sought for 

 and tried, and are unfortunately still believed in to a very great extent. 



Distemper has a certain course to run, and in this disease Nature 

 seems to attempt the elimination of the poison through the secretions 

 thrown out by the naso-pharyngeal mucous membrane. 



Our chief difficulty in the treatment of distemper lies in the 

 complications thereof. We may, and often do, have the organs of 

 respiration attacked; we have sometimes congestion of the liver, or 

 mucous inflammation of the bile ducts, or some lesion of the brain or 

 nervous structures, combined with epilepsy, convulsions, or chorea. 

 Distemper is also often complicated with severe disease of the bowels, 

 and at times with an affection of the eyes. 



Causes Whether it be that the distemper virus, the poison seedling 

 of the disease, really originates in the kennel, or is the result of contact 

 of one dog with another, or whether the poison floats to the kennel on 

 the wings of the wind, or is carried there on a shoe or the point of a 

 walking-stick, the following facts ought to be borne in mind : (1) Any- 

 thing that debilitates the body or weakens the nervous system paves 



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