All the other kinds of poison dogs are likely to get or be given work as irritants, and these need veterinary diagnosis. Salt, I may here remark, is so violent and irritating a purgative to the dog that it is next door to a poison, and the effects of castor oil in his intestine are not so very far behind. Constant drugging is a thing as much to be avoided in dogs as in their owners, and I cannot too strongly deprecate the foolish practice--foolish or worse--of giving doses of castor oil after shows, or as so-called prophylactics--preventives of illness. If a dog has been much confined at a show, and is likely to be irregular in consequence, a little pure olive oil with his dinner (not the nut oil often sold by grocers as olive oil) will do no harm, although a dinner of oatmeal gruel or boiled sheep's liver would be much more sensible and act better; if he seems well and lively, leave him alone. Some people actually go the length of dosing their puppies with castor oil at intervals, for no reason that I can ascertain beyond a vague idea that it "clears the system." So it does--of strength and the healthy mucoid secretion of the intestine, without which natural functions cannot be properly performed. Syrup of buck-thorn, or cascara sagrada, is another medicine that should never be given to small dogs: it is far too irritating and severe. When we have such excellent aperients as olive oil, magnesia, and rhubarb among drugs, and boiled sheep's liver among meats, we want no semi-poisonous irritant and violent drugs like castor oil, which, in the end, produce the very condition they were supposed to cure, and by pulling down the system, open the door to illness.
=Fits.=--Of these, epileptic fits are the most dangerous and by far the least common. A dog suffering from epilepsy which is thoroughly established, is practically incurable, in the present state of canine medical science. Later, perhaps, the Röntgen rays may be beneficially applied to this disease in dogs, as in human beings. In a popular manual it is scarcely necessary to go further into the subject than to say that epilepsy need not be suspected unless the convulsive attacks are more or less recurrent, and so frequent as to exhaust the animal. Not until we have tried such treatment as an amateur can safely give, which is quite enough to cure ordinary teething or suckling fits due merely to some reflex irritation affecting the brain, and found it fail, need we fear epilepsy; and when we do fear it with any reason, skilled advice and diagnosis is absolutely needful, since the case must be watched and treated on its merits.