Beeton's book of poultry and domestic animals - Thurman Lodge ...

soon renders the skin of the dog diseased, and its body gross.
Milk, fine bread, cakes, or siigar, are better fare for children
given to the brute, they are apt to generate disorder, which a
long course of medicine will not in eveiy case eradicate. Nice
food, or that which a human being would so consider, is, in
fact, not fitted to support the dog in health. It may appear
ofiensiye to ladies when tliey behold their favourites gorge
ranWy, but Nature has wisely ordained that her numerous
children should, by their difierence of appetite, consume the
produce of the earth. The dog, therefore, can enjoy and thrive
on that which man thinks of with disgust ; bat our reason sees
in this circumstance no fact worthy of our exclamation. The
animal seeking the provender its Creator formed it to relish is
not raecessariZi/ unclean The spaniel which, bloated mth
sweets, escapes from the drawing-room to amuse itself with a
bone picked from a dunghill, follows but the inclination of its
kind, and, whUe tearing with its teeth the dirt-begrimed morsel,
it is, according to its nature, daintily employed An
occasional bone, and even a little dirt, are beneficial to the
canine race ; while food nicely minced, and served on plates, is
calculated to do harm. Rich and immoderate living fattens to
excess, destroys activity, renders the bowels costive, and causes
the teeth to be encrusted with tartar."
First, concerning the soi-t of food that should be given to
house-dogs, little or big.
Meat, when allowed, cannot be of too coarse a quality ; the
sliin or the cheek of the ox being preferable to the ribs or buttocks
; it should be lean. Paunch is excellent meat for dogs, and
to aristocratic bow-wows it may be given in the form of tripe.
Never allow your dog to eat what is commonly known as " cat'smeat."
I am loth to say a word that may work iU towards any
branch of industry, but there is little doubt that the aboUtion
of the " cat's-meat " business would be an immense benefit to
the canine and feline races. Consider the long odds that exist
against the chance of the horsefiesh being nutritious P First,
it may be safely reckoned that at least a fourth of the number
of horses killed are diseased. Secondly, it is generally pitched
into the cauldron almost before it is cold ; and as it does not in
the least, concern either the wholesale or the retail dealer,
whether the meat be lean or tough, very little attention is paid
to the boiling. Thirdly, the retail dealer— ^the peripatetic cat'smeat
man—as a rtde, brings the meat hot from the copper, and
though, perhaps, equally as a ru.le, yet by no means as an
;