The Dog - By Dinks, Mayhew, And Hutchinson

EDITORS PREFACE. IN offering to the American public a new edition of DINKS and MAYHEW on the Dog, which, I am happy to find, is largely called for, I have been induced to make a further addition, which will, 1 think, render this the most perfect and comprehensive work in existence for the dog fancier and dog lover. For myself I claim no merit, since, with the excep- tion of one or two trivial changes in unimportant recipes in DINKS, and some abridgment of the last admirable work of Col. HUTCHINSON on Dog Breaking, whieh is now included in this volume, I have found occasion to make no alterations whatever, and, save a few notes, no additions. I will add, in brief, that while I believe the little manual of Dinks to be the best short and brief com- pendium on the Dog, particularly as regards his breeding, conditioning, kennel and field management, and general specialities, there can be no possible doubt that Mayhews pages are the ne plus ultra of canine pathology. There is nothing comparable to his treatment of all diseases for gentleness, simplicity, mercy to the animal, and effect. I have no hesitation in saying, that ay person with sufficient intelli- gence to make a diagnosis according to his showing of the symptoms, and patience to exhibit his remedies, precisely according to his directions, cannot fail of success. I have this year treated, myself, two very unusually severe cases of distemper, one of acute dysentery, one of chronic diarrhoea, and one of most aggravated mange, implicitly after his instructions, and that with perfect, and, in three instances, most unexpected, success. The cases of distemper were got rid of with less suffering to the animals, and with less in fact, noprostration or emaciation than I have ever before witnessed. I shall never attempt any practice other than that of Mayhew, for distemper and, as he says, I am satisfied it is true, that no dog, taken in time, arid treated by his rules, need die of this disease. Colonel Hutchinsons volume, which is to dog- breaking, what Mayhews is to dog-medicining science, experience, patience, temper, gentleness, and judgment, against brute force and unreasoning ignorance I have so far abridged as to omit, while retaining all the rules and precepts, such anecdotes of the habits, tricks, faults, and perfections of indivi- dual animals, and the discursive matter relative to Indian field sports, and general education of animals, as, however interesting in themselves, have no parti- cular utility to the dog-breaker or sportsman in America. Beyond this I liave done no more than to change the word September to the more general term of Autumn, in the heading of the chapters, and to add a few short notes, explanatory of the differences and comparative relations of English and Ame- rican game. I will conclude by observing, that although this work is exclusively on breaking for English shooting, there is not one word in it, which is not applicable to this country. The methods of woodcock and snipe shooting are exactly the same in both countries, excepting only that in England there is no summer-cock shooting. Otherwise, the practice, the rules, and the qualifica- tions of dogs are identical. The partridge, in England, varies in few of its habits from our quail I might almost say in none unless that it prefers turnip fields, potatoe fields, long clover, standing beans, and the like, to bushy coverts andunderwood among tall timber, and that it never takes to the tree...