Dogs and All about Them

CONSTIPATION, more commonly called costiveness, is also a very common complaint. It often occurs in the progress of other diseases, but is just as often a separate ailment. Perhaps no complaint to which our canine friends are liable is less understood by the non-professional dog doctor and by dog owners themselves. Often caused by weakness in the coats of the intestine. The exhibition of purgatives can only have a temporary effect in relieving the symptoms, and is certain to be followed by reaction, and consequently by further debility. Want of exercise and bath common cause. Youatt was never more correct in his life than when he said: "Many dogs have a dry constipated habit, often greatly increased by the bones on which they are fed. This favours the disposition to mange, etc. It produces indigestion, encourages worms, blackens the teeth, and causes fetid breath." Symptoms--The stools are hard, usually in large round balls, and defecation is accomplished with great difficulty, the animal often having to try several times before he succeeds in effecting the act, and this only after the most acute suffering. The faeces are generally covered with white mucus, showing the heat and semi-dry condition of the gut. The stool is sometimes so dry as to fall to pieces like so much oatmeal. There is generally also a deficiency of bile in the motions, and, in addition to simple costiveness, we have more or less loss of appetite, with a too pale tongue, dullness, and sleepiness, with slight redness of the conjunctiva. Sometimes constipation alternates with diarrhoea, the food being improperly commingled with the gastric and other juices, ferments, spoils, and becomes, instead of healthy blood-producing chyme, an irritant purgative.