Treatment: It consists principally in giving the dog rest. Sometimes several weeks’ quiet are necessary, as well as rubbing the back with some anodyne liniment, as the following:—

Recipe: The Liniment:

Chloroform (meth.),½ ounce.
Tincture Hyoscyamus,½ ounce.
Spirits of Camphor,1 ounce.
Soap Liniment,1 ounce.
Mix.

Apply with gentle friction once or twice a day to the painful parts. A dose of aperient medicine does good, and whilst the dog is at rest a light diet should be given.

Feeding:

Dogs require concentrated food, and to keep a dog in the best condition, meat should form half his diet.

Taking first the toy breeds. When puppies are weaned, it must be remembered that the mother’s milk is far stronger than cows’ milk, and when possible, goats’ milk should be given; cows’ milk thickened with Plasmon is a good substitute. The mother should be allowed to feed her puppies during the night in the initial stages of weaning.

At five weeks old, puppies should be given a little scraped raw meat—very small quantities, a small eggspoonful once a day—and they should be treated for worms. As they get stronger, and are entirely weaned (at six to seven weeks), Benger’s food, a little rusk and broth, rusk and milk, and scraped raw meat, can be given alternately four times a day in small quantities. Directly the teeth begin to come through, one of Spratt’s invalid biscuits should be given them to amuse themselves with. At four months old, the meals should be reduced to three in number, say, stale brown bread and milk in the morning, raw meat, or cooked meat, and stale bread in the middle of the day, and some puppy biscuit at night. At six months old, two meals a day will be sufficient, consisting of dry biscuit in the middle of the day, and at night a raw meat meal, twice a week; on other days, fine Rodnim or stale bread with broth, sheeps’-hearts or skirts, and other cooked meats, chopped up finely, mixed with it.

Non-splintering bones are very good for puppies to have once or twice a week, as it helps them during teething, and with dry biscuits, acts as the dog’s tooth-brush. Bones of game and poultry should on no account be given.

Both in the matter of biscuits and meat foods, the greatest possible variety obtainable should be given. Sheeps’-heads and hearts, tripe, skirts, New Zealand mutton, bullocks’-heads and hearts, and fish, all help to vary the dog’s diet.