Worms ought not to be a necessary accompaniment of puppyhood, and if the sire and dam are properly attended to in advance they need not be.  The writer has attended at the birth of puppies, not one of whom has shown the remotest sign of having a worm, and the puppies have almost galloped into healthy, happy maturity, protected from all the usual canine ailments by constitutions impervious to disease.  He has seen others almost eaten away by worms.  Great writhing knots of them have been ejected; they have been vomited; they have wriggled out of the nostrils; they have perforated the stomach and wrought such damage that most of the puppies succumbed, and those that survived were permanently deficient in stamina and liable to go wrong on the least provocating.  The puppy that is free from worms starts life with a great advantage.

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.