124 CURE FOR KENNEL SICKNESS 



every sporting dog during the season should be fed twice 

 a day, morning and evening, and on the very best and 

 strongest food, mixed up quite thick ; quality, not 

 quantity, being of paramount importance. 



To hounds which become kennel-sick, losing their 

 condition, and showing symptoms of attenuation and 

 decay, a few weeks' exemption from the kennel dietary, 

 if allowed to run at large and eat raw meat and bones, 

 induces perfect renovation of health and vigour, which 

 at once, I think, proves that the system I advocate in 

 feeding is most natural and conducive to longevity in 

 the canine species ; and I never shall think otherwise of 

 the thin washy food generally given to fox-hounds, but 

 as weakening to their digestive organs, and therefore 

 irreconcilable with a vigorous state of body. This system 

 is also quite the reverse of economical. A larger body of 

 hounds is kept at an unnecessary expense, and fed so 

 badly that they are unequal to hunt more than two (if 

 so many) days in the week ; whereas, a third less in 

 number, if properly fed, would not only do more work, 

 but do it in far superior style. 



In the generality of kennels it is too much the practice 

 to take all fish that comes to the net, or all horses, dead 

 or alive, diseased or starved, which are brought for 

 hounds, the skins being the huntsman's perquisites. The 

 soup made from a horse that has died of disease must be 

 very heating, and something more — totally unfit for fox- 

 hounds ; and I have occasionally been nearly knocked 

 down by the stench arising from some boiHng-houses. 

 This nuisance should not be tolerated in any well-con- 

 ducted estabhshment, where a large paddock ought to 

 be appropriated to the horses intended for the kennel, in 

 which they might be kept and fed some few weeks before 



