50o 



RECREATION 



he may slip through your hands just as the 

 case seems hopeful. Beef, iron and wine — 

 home-made for safety — in doses of three tea- 

 spoonfuls every three hours is as good as any- 

 thing. 



The best wine is sherry, and the beef 

 extract should have been made under super- 

 vision, as one cannot afford to take chances, 

 and patent medicines are not always what the 

 labels claim. 



For the first few days the bowels will prob- 

 ably be constipated and you will have to give 

 the remedies already indicated every second 

 clay; later on they may be just the reverse. Then 

 a mixture of tincture of opium, two drachms; 

 subnitrate of bismuth, half an ounce; syrup of 

 rhubarb, one ounce, and chalk mixture, three 

 ounces, may be given in tablespoonful doses 

 every two or three hours, to puppies of large 

 breeds, or less to smaller animals. 



When a dog has had distemper he will be 

 weak and spiritless for some time, and it 

 often retards his growth and development, but 

 with care he will eventually recover, and then 

 his chances of living to a good age are bright, 

 for of all the ills to which dog flesh is heir, none 

 is so fatal as distemper. 



It must be a disease of civilization, for wild 

 dogs do not appear to suffer from it, though the 

 half -Indian dogs of the Northern and Western 

 tribes sometimes fall victims by the hundred. 

 The Indian does nothing to help the sick 

 animal, notwithstanding that without a team 

 of sleigh dogs he is very badly off. So the poor 

 "husky" worries along, making the best fight 

 he can, and if the game goes against him, yield- 

 ing up the ghost under some bush without aid 

 or comfort from his savage master. But civil- 

 ized man has got too far from the brute to see 

 his best friend suffer, while he remains stolid 

 and inert. It is our duty to do all we can for 

 our dog, but we must not make the mistake of 

 overdosing him nor of driving him into his 

 grave by fussing when what he most craves is 

 rest and quiet. 



The Pocket Greyhound 



There is hardly a breed of dog known, writes 

 H. Jenkins, of Bridgeport, Conn., that has not 

 been boomed at one time or another in the 

 United States, yet there is one exception, and it 

 is a marvelously strange one, seeing that few 

 better breeds for sport exist. I refer to the 

 whippet, "the poor man's greyhound." The 

 only State where I have found much interest 

 taken in this breed is New Jersey, and even 

 there it is mostly the foreign mill operatives that 

 keep this smart little dog. 



Big dogs are all very well in their way, but 



where high rents prevail and quarters are 

 cramped, it is the smaller animal that affords 

 the most fun. 



The whippet is built on the same lines almost 

 as the greyhound, though he shows strong evi- 

 dence of the terrier, to which he owes about half 

 his blood. He is also somewhat like the Italian 

 greyhound, but stouter, and by no means the 

 toy that little shivering dog is. 



The whippet may be bred and trained either 

 for actual sport, i.e., rabbit coursing, or for 

 racing. His speed is nearly triple that of a 

 man, as a crack dog covers the usual course, 

 200 yards in length, in 12 seconds. Though 

 dogs weighing up to 26 pounds are often seen 

 running, the best judges limit the weight to 

 about 24 pounds, and they may be as small as 

 14 pounds, for whippet races are always handi- 

 caps. 



I hope, some day, to see this sport "catch on" 

 in the United States. The merry beagle has 

 come to stay, and there is no reason why the 

 whippet should not also become popular. Un- 

 fortunately, there is much fraud in whippet rac- 

 ing in the home of its birth, namely, the north of 

 England, but that is, of course, no reason why 

 it should not become a favorite sport, for the 

 same criticism applies to the turf and to ath- 

 letics — in fact, to all trials of speed. 



If there are any old whippet owners and 

 trainers among the readers of Recreation, I 

 hope they will tell us something about the sport 

 and try and make whippet racing a go on this 

 side of the pond. 



Simplicity in Training 



No two dogs have exactly the same natural 

 ability, no two the same traits of character. 

 Hence it follows that no set rule or rules should 

 govern any dog's training. Much better simply 

 teach the dog to obey you promptly when called 

 to heel, and let him hunt in his own way, than 

 attempt to direct his every movement. So, for 

 your own sake and for the dog's, if you are 

 "breaking in" a youngster this summer for the 

 fall work you will do best to confine the training 

 to merely getting well acquainted with the dog, 

 teaching him to mind explicitly two or three 

 commands and giving him plenty of exercise in 

 the field. "Come here" (on the whistle — one 

 short and one long blast), "Heel," "Goon" and 

 "Ho" — the latter to stop the dog at a distance, 

 and to be substituted by a long blast on the 

 whistle — are sufficient to govern any good field 

 dog, and if the dog learns them well and obeys 

 them promptly the average sportsman will need 

 nothing more save "bird sense," which the dog 

 must inherit and which he must develop in his 

 own way. 



