Costiveness
is a disease when it becomes habitual. It is connected with disease of the intestinal canal. Many dogs have a dry constipated habit, often greatly increased by the bones on which they are too frequently fed. This favours the disposition to mange and to many diseases depending on morbid secretions. It produces indigestion, encourages worms, blackens the teeth, and causes fetid breath. The food often accumulates in the intestines, and the consequence is inflammation of these organs. A dog should never be suffered to remain costive more than a couple of days. An aloetic ball or some Epsom salts should then be administered; and this failing to produce the desired effect, the castor-oil mixture, with spirits of buckthorn and white poppies, should be administered, and the use of the clyster-pipe resorted to. It may be necessary to introduce the finger or the handle of a spoon when the faecal matter is more than usually hard, and it is with difficulty broken down; small doses of castor-oil should be afterwards resorted to, and recourse occasionally be had to boiled liver, which the dog will rarely refuse. The best means, however, of preventing costiveness in dogs, as well as in men, is regular exercise. A dog who is kept chained up in a kennel should be taken out and have a certain quantity of exercise once in the twenty-four hours. When this cannot be done, the food should consist chiefly of well-boiled farinaceous matter.
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