Sporting Dogs: Their Points and Management in Health and Disease

by Frank Townend Barton

CHAPTER XXV

Injuries and Minor Operations

Wounds—Overgrown Claws—Fractures

WOUNDS

Lacerated and punctured wounds are very common, more especially amongst sporting dogs, and this chiefly owing to the thickets, etc., they have to face during work.

Wounds and fractures are not uncommonly associated; if so, the injury is spoken of as compound. The gravity of a dual injury is much greater than where either exists as a single one.

Gunshot wounds are not uncommon, and when examining such, a good deal of care is necessary. Sometimes the shots are simply lodged beneath the skin, and can be felt by rolling the skin beneath the fingers.

In other instances the flesh is penetrated, and, it may be, the internal organs injured.

Although shot may have penetrated the cavity of the chest, or the belly, it does not follow that the injury be of a vital nature; in fact, the author's experience of gunshot wounds in the dog has been as a rule favourable, most of the dogs showing but little after effects.

If shot have passed deeply in, penetrating the chest, etc., no attempt should be made to interfere with the wounds.