With regard to the feeding of dogs, some few words are necessary, and we will endeavor to point out the best way to manage them properly, and with a due regard to economy. Where only one or two dogs are kept, it is presumed that the refuse of the house is ample for them. It will keep them in good order and condition; but where more are kept, it will be necessary to look further for their supplies. We will therefore treat them as one would a kennel, distinguishing town from country; for in the one what would be extremely cheap, in the other would be dear. For ordinary feeding, then, in town, purchase beef heads, sheep ditto, offal, i.e. feet, bellies, &c., which clean. Chop them up and boil to rags in a copper, filling up your copper as the water boils away. You may add to this a little salt, cabbage, parsnips, potatoes, carrots, turnips, or any other cheap vegetable. Put this soup aside, and then boil old Indian meal till it is quite stiff. Let it also get cold. Take of the boiled meal as much as you think requisite, adding sufficient of the broth to liquefy it. This is the cheapest town food. In the country during the summer, skimmed milk, sour milk, buttermilk, or whey, may be used in place of the soup. In the winter, it is as well to give soup occasionally for a change. Never use new Indian flour. It scours the dogs dreadfully. Old does not. The plan I adopt is, to buy Indian corn this year for use next, store it, and send it to grind as I require it; and as the millers have no object in boning the old meal, returning new for it, I insure by this means no illness from feeding in my kennel. Although Indian corn has not either so much albumen or saccharine matter in it as oats, it does tolerably well with broth; but when the greatest amount of work is required in a certain given time from a certain quantity of dogs, as in a week's, fortnight's, or month's shooting excursion, I always use oatmeal, for two reasons: – 1st, it is far more nourishing in itself, a less bulk of it going further than corn meal: – 2nd, you cannot depend on getting old meal in the country, nor yet meat always to make soup. The dogs fed on oatmeal porridge and milk, which you always can get, do a vast deal of work, and have good scenting powers. Using these different articles, I calculate each dog to cost me one shilling York currency per week, and I pay fifty cents per bushel for Indian corn, six dollars per barrel for oatmeal (old), one York shilling for beef head, milk three cents per quart for new, probably, one and a half for skim. In a house there are always bones, potatoe peelings, and pot liquor. By cleaning the potatoes before peeling, and popping all into the dog pot, a considerable saving is effected in a year, and the dogs are benefited thereby. Mangel Wurtzel and Ruta Bagas, I believe they call them this side the water, are easily grown, and are good food, boiled up with soup.
This brings me on to what is termed "condition," in other words, that form of body best adapted to undergo long and continued exertion. It is equally certain that a dog too fat, as well as one all skin and bone, is not in this state. These are the two forms from which different people start to bring their animals to the mark. Of the two, I certainly prefer the fat one. During the summer time, dogs should have plenty of air, water, and exercise. This is easily managed by taking them out whenever you go walking or riding, or letting them be loose all day, kennelling at night, and when this is done, by a mild dose of physic a fortnight before the season, and additional exercise along a hard road to harden their feet, say two or three hours daily, you have your dogs in fair working order. When you have a dog too fat, you must purge him, and put him through a course of long but slow exercise at first, quickening by degrees, till you work off the fat, and leave substance and muscle in its place. With a lean dog you have a far harder job to manage, and one which takes a long time to accomplish. A mild dose to put him in form first, then the best, strongest, and most nutritious food you can get. Oatmeal and strong broth, gentle and slow exercise, this is the plan to put beef on his bones without fat. As he grows in substance, increase and quicken his work. Any person living in the country does or ought to take his dogs out when he rides or drives. The pace is fast and severe enough for them, and generally lasts sufficiently long. My dogs are exercised this way every time the horses go out, and are kept in fine order, if anything too fine, perhaps; but, then, what there is, is all muscle and hard flesh. During the shooting season, always feed your dogs with warm meals. Three o'clock is the best time at that season of the year, and a separate mess kept warm for your brace at work, when they return. Nothing conduces more to the keeping your dogs in condition than regular feeding hours and regular work. One meal a day is sufficient. Three o'clock is the best hour, as the dogs have tolerably emptied themselves by the next morning. I omitted to mention in the proper place to accustom your pups to the same food as when kennelled they will get. For this purpose, as soon as they feed well, give them regular kennel food, except that they must have three feeds a day for some six months, and after that two, till they are full grown. Use as little medicine as possible. Always feed your worked dogs immediately they get home. If you wait awhile, and they are tired, they curl themselves up, get stiff, and don't feed properly; and if they so refuse their food, and are by any accident to be out next day, they will not be up to the work. No dogs, however, can stand daily work properly for more than three days, and even that is more than enough for them, but they will stand every second day, if well attended to, for a considerable time. Always see your dogs fed yourself. No servant will do it as it should be done. Ten minutes or a quarter of an hour devoted to this as soon as you return from the field, will be more than repaid when next you use them. If you ride, or rather drive to your ground, as is best to do when more than a mile away, ride your dogs also; ditto as you return. Every little helps, and this short ride wonderfully saves your animals. I invariably do this. But when I drive, say twenty miles or so, to a shooting station, I generally run one brace or so the whole way, and the other brace perhaps ten miles, taking out next day that brace which only ran the short distance. Always on a trip of this kind take a bag of meal with you also. You are then safe. The neglect of this precaution in one or two instances has obliged me to use boiled beef alone, to the very great detriment of the olfactory senses of my dogs. Their noses, on this kind of food, completely fail them. Greasy substances also are objectionable for the same cause, unless very well incorporated with meal. For this reason I object to "tallow scrap" or chandlers' graves; but this I sometimes use in summer. Regular work, correct feeding, and regular hours, that is the great secret of one man's dogs standing harder work than others. A little attention to the subject will enable any one to keep his animals pretty near the mark. Amongst the receipts will be found one used in England for feeding greyhounds when in training, if any one likes to go to the expense of it.
This treatise would not be complete without making some remarks on that very essential thing, the kennel. Where only a brace of dogs are kept, the common movable box kennel is sufficient. This should be large enough to hold the two comfortably, with a sharp pitch to the roof and projecting front; but I should recommend one for each dog slightly raised from the ground, sufficiently high for the dog to stand up in, and wide enough for him to turn round in. The entrance had better be boarded up, except a hole for him to enter and get out by. But where a large number of dogs are kept, this plan of separate houses is expensive, and in their place I would recommend a brick building sixteen feet long by five feet wide and six feet high, or, if brick be not get-at-able, a boarded house will do; but it ought to be lined and boarded outside, the space between the two filled up with sawdust, and weather-boarded. Besides, this sixteen feet must be divided into three compartments right up to the top, one eight feet for the dogs, one five for the bitches, and one three feet for the worked dogs. The doors should be large enough to admit a man to clean. The beds ought to be raised on a bench from the floor, this bench movable on hinges at the back, so that it can be hoisted up, and cleaning done below. The dogs ought to be prevented getting under their beds, by a board reaching from the outside edge of the bench to the floor. Six or eight inches is sufficient raise. The floor of this kennel should slope outwards, to carry off wet. The door should have a small hole in it, with a swing door, so that by pushing against it, the dogs can get either in or out. In front of these two, that is to say, the dog and bitch departments, a court-yard, either paved or flagged, both preferable to brick, since they dry quicker, and consequently there is less fear of kennel lameness, caused by paddling on a damp floor. These courts ought to run out at least ten or fifteen feet to the front, and of course the partition kept up between the two. This outside court may be palisaded, but it should be at least ten feet high, else the dogs are liable to break kennel; and the front of the house also at the top should be fortified, to prevent their eloping that way. If possible, a stream of running water should be conducted through the yards; it aids its daily washing, as well as enabling the dogs to get as much pure water as they choose. When this cannot be had, a trough must be daily filled for their use. Clean wheat straw, removed twice a week, or shavings of pine or cedar when to be had are better, must be used for their beds. Always feed your dogs together in a V shaped trough, raised slightly from the ground, taking care to restrain the greedy and encourage the shy feeders. In a building of this sort, they will be perfectly warm and comfortable. Every portion of it must be daily cleaned out, and the rubbish carried away. Twice a year it should be whitewashed inside and out, and fumigated with sulphur, tobacco, &c. This considerably helps to destroy vermin. Nothing conduces more to disease than a filthy kennel, nothing vitiates a dog's nose more than fœtid smells. In the rear of this kennel should be your boiling house, if your establishment requires one. All that is required is a copper, set in brick, with a chimney, to boil mush and meat in, a barrel to hold soup, and a ledge or tray, three or four inches deep, to pour the mush in to cool and set; a chopping block, knife, ladle, with long wooden handle, to stir and empty the copper with, a few hooks to hang flesh on, when you use horse-flesh, &c., in place of heads – equally good, by the way, when you can get it – shovel, broom, and buckets. I believe all in this department is now complete and requisite, when you keep six or more dogs. The spare place is good for breeding bitches, when you do not require it for your tired dogs, as also for sick ones. In fact, you cannot well do without it.
And now methinks I may safely add a few words on guns. This, of course, especially to the rising generation. I need not tell you not to put the shot all in one barrel and the powder in the other, though I have frequently seen it done, aye, and done it myself, when in a mooning fit; but I will say, never carry your gun at full cock or with the hammers down, than which last there cannot be anything more dangerous. The slightest pull upon the cock is sufficient to cause it to fall so smartly on the cone or nipple as to explode the cap. Positively, I would not shoot a day, no, nor an hour, with a man that so carried his gun. At half cock there is no danger. By pulling ever so hard at the trigger, you cannot get it off; and if you raise the cock ever so little, it falls back to half cock, or, at the worst, catches at full cock. Never overcharge your gun. Two to two and a half drachms of powder, and one ounce to one and a quarter of shot, is about the load. For summer shooting, still less. Never take out a dirty gun, not even if only once fired out of, even if you have to clean it yourself. After cleaning with soap rubbed on the tow in warm, or better, cold water, without the soap, if not over dirty, remove the tow, put on clean, and pump out remaining dirt in clean warm water, rinsing out the third time in other clean warm water. Invert the barrels, muzzle downwards, while you refix your dry tow on the rod. Work them out successively with several changes of tow, till they burn again. Drop a few drops of animal oil – refined by putting shot into the bottle; neat's foot oil is best for this – on to the tow, and rub out the inside of barrels with it well. Wipe the outside with oil rag, cleaning around the nipples with a hard brush and a stick; ditto hammers and the steel furniture. Use boiled oil to rub off the stock, but it must be well rubbed in. Before using next day, rub over every part with a clean dry rag. Nothing is more disgusting than an oily gun, and yet nothing is more requisite than to keep it so when out of use. In receipts you will find a composition to prevent water penetrating to the locks, which ought to be as seldom removed as possible. I shall not tell you how to do this, for if you do know the how, where is the necessity, and if you don't, in all probability you would break a scear or mainspring in the attempt, as I did, when first I essayed, and after that had to get the gamekeeper to put it together. So your best plan in this latter case is to watch the method for a time or two, when you will know as much of the matter as I do.
The finest barrels are rusted the most easily, and suffer the more detriment by rusting. Of course the fouler the gun the greater the evil that arises from its being left foul. In hot weather, barrels suffer infinitely more than in cold; and in wet, than in dry. When dampness and heat are combined, the mischief is yet augmented; and, probably, the worst conditions that can be supposed are when, to dampness and heat, a salt atmosphere is superadded.
No man who owns a fine gun, which he values, ought ever to put it aside after use without cleaning, even if he have fired but a single shot. Again, every man who loves his gun, should make it a point to clean it with his own hands. It may do in Europe, where one has a game-keeper at his elbow who knows how to clean a gun better than he does himself, and who takes as much pride in having it clean as he. Use strong and clean shooting powders. Don't use too large, nor yet too small shot. Six, seven, and eight are about your mark for ordinary work; for duck, from common gun, number four. Never leave your dog whip at home: you always want it most on those occasions. A gun thirty-one inch barrel, fourteen gauge, and eight pounds weight, is as useful an article as you can have. Never poke at a bird, that is, try to see him along the barrels. If you do, you never can be a good or a quick shot. Fix your eye or eyes on the bird, lift up your gun, and fire the moment it touches your shoulder. Practise this a little, and believe me you will give the pokers the go by in a short time. It is the only way to be a sharp shot. And now I will have done, trusting I have not wasted your time in reading so far to no purpose.
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