"I am thoroughly convinced," says he, "from my own experience, and, I may add, my own suffering, that the disease of kennel lameness arises only from one cause, and that is an injudicious and unfortunate selection of the spot for building. The kennel is generally built on a sand-bed, or on a sandstone rock, while the healthiest grounds in England are on a stiff clay, and they are the healthiest because they are the least porous. Although this may be contrary to the opinion and prejudice of the majority of sportsmen, it is a fact that cannot be contradicted.
Through a light and friable soil, such as sand and sandstone, a vapour, more or less dense, is continually exhaling and causing a perpetual damp, which produces that fearful rheumatism which goes by the name of kennel lameness, while the kennels that are built on a clay soil, a soil of an impervious nature, are invariably healthy.
I could," he adds, "enumerate twenty kennels to prove the effect — the invariable effect — of the existence of the disease on the one part, and of the healthiness of the situation on the other. I turn particularly to her Majesty's kennel at Ascot, the arches of which were laid under the very foundation strain, and yet little at no amendment has ever taken place in the healthiness and comfort of the dogs. It is necessary to select a sound and healthy situation when about to erect a kennel, and that sound and healthy situation can be met with alone on a strong impervious clay soil. We must have no fluid oozing through the walls or the floor of the kennel, and producing damp and unhealthy vapours, such as we find in the sandbed."
With regard to this there can be no error.
, in his excellent treatise on
Kennel Lameness
, asks, whether it does not appear that this disease is on the increase. He asks,
How is it that neither Beckford nor Somerville says one word that clearly applies to the disease; and no one, however learned he might be in canine pathology, has been able clearly to define the disease, much less to discover a remedy for it?"
that Mr. Blaine says on the matter amounts only to this:
"The healthiness of the situation on which any kennel is to be built, is an important consideration. It is essential that it should be both dry and airy, and it should also be warm. A damp kennel produces rheumatism in dogs, which shows itself sometimes by weakness in the loins, but more frequently by lameness in the shoulders, known under the name of kennel lameness."