Lavender, fennel and angelica produce in the dog a condition of extreme terror, and overcome all disposition to exercise self-defense.
Mints and origanum induce hallucinations of odor. The dog seeks around with head and nose elevated, sniffs the air, moves cautiously, fixes his eye on some phantom object, and starts to hunt imaginary game. The love of catmint seems to amount to a mania in the feline animal.
Kidney vetch evidently causes a sensation of itching or formication; the dog bites the hair of the tail, the hind limbs or the flank as if to destroy fleas or other vermin.
Dogs under chloroform have sought to hunt, and stallions under ether have shown generative excitement with erection of the penis and movements of coition.
TIMIDITY. PANIC. STAMPEDE.
Timidity. Panic. Timid driver. Impaired vision. Nervous. Irritability. Gadding. Gregarious habit. Absence of natural weapons. Treatment. Habit. Substitution. Absolute constraint. Kindness. Boldness. Work. Moderate diet.
An animal is naturally nervous, and by habit has become timid until it is virtually impossible to utilize it. In a body of animals, fear is quickly transferred from one to the other until all join in a wild panic or stampede. This is common in range cattle or horses, but is found in army horses as well, and a whole regiment will sometimes refuse to longer face the enemy and flee in spite of every effort of the rider. On a smaller scale, two timid horses in a team, scared by some unusual sight, add each to the sense of fear of the other, as they try to escape, until they gallop blindly into any danger. This sense of terror is often fostered by the timid rider or driver, every feeling of apprehension conveyed through the trembling or uncertain hand, or the voice which has lost the element of confidence, tending to undermine the last vestige of trust on the part of the horse. Imperfect sight is one cause of panic, as the perception of common objects in distorted form or unwonted situations strikes terror to the timid animal, causing shying or bolting. Better absolute blindness than such imperfect vision.
A constitutional timidity tends constantly to increase unless the animal is judiciously accustomed to the object of terror. The horse once scared, seems to become more and more watchful for other objects of dread, and even inclined to bolt from such as are common and of every day occurrence.
Cattle and sheep attacked by the gadfly (œstrus) flee in great terror, and this dread is communicated from animal to animal so that the whole herd or flock is suddenly panic-stricken. The bellow of the ox attacked and the erection of its tail is the signal for every other within reach to join the stampede.
These panics are associated with the instinct of these races toward a gregarious life; they mass together for protection and they learn to heed the slightest indication of approaching danger. This instinct grows more powerful by constant exercise, and is most marked in those genera which have the least natural means of protection. Hence, of all animals sheep are most easily panic-stricken, and once affected, they move in mass, one following its fellow, without object, without definite direction or destination, and without consideration of the other dangers they are to meet. Hence, if one sheep jumps over the parapet of a bridge to certain destruction, the whole flock speedily follows. If one leaps over a fallen tree into a snow bank, all at once follow suit and pile above each other in one suffocating, perishing mass.