"If the dog is in good condition, the muscles firm, elastic and properly nurtured by a fit diet, muscular effort will, if severe, produce only the minimum amount of heat and effete matter. If the animal is in poor condition, the muscles soft and flabby, surrounded by fat, slight exercise will consume a large amount of this tissue and produce a corresponding amount of heat and waste products. And it is these poisonous waste products that the athlete, horse and dog have to contend with, and, no matter how carefully trained it is, these waste products eventually limit their performance.

"A dog's wind may be all right, he is ready to go and wants to go, but if the production of these waste products is too rapid for their removal by the kidneys and other organs, they remain in the system and partially paralyze the nerves controlling the muscles and they refuse to act.

"The fat or muscle-making possibilities of various foods and the animal's actual condition can be studied very intelligently by the use, after exercise or work, of a small clinical thermometer. When the maximum amount of work short of actual exhaustion produces the minimum degree of heat as registered by the thermometer, the animal is in the best condition and the foods that will afford these results are the foods to be adopted, and the foods that produce the largest amount of heat for a given amount of work are to be avoided, as a general working system.

"It can be laid down that the quantity of meat can be reduced during the close season and increased during the working season to almost an all-meat diet with satisfactory results. Oatmeal and unbolted wheat flour are the most desirable of grains. Wheat Hour, rye or barley shorts should be baked as bread pones and allowed to cool and afterward broken up and softened with meal liquor, soup or milk. Cornmeal is a popular food with trainers, probably on account of its price, ease of obtaining and preparing, but it is a fat producer and not a muscle builder. No horse trainer would feed it to a thoroughbred when conditioning him for a race, and while trainers may feel satisfied with the way their dogs thrive, I am sure they would be capable of greater muscular effort if led on one of the other grains.

"A very good way of preparing food for a string of dogs is to purchase a few sheeps' heads, a couple of beeves' heads, or a liver or two, or twenty or thirty pounds of chucks or neck pieces chopped fine. Boil the heads in a kettle until they are thoroughly cooked, and the meat can easily be scraped from the bones. This meat should then be chopped or shredded into small pieces and mixed with from three to six times its weight of whole wheat flour, rye or corn meal, softened and worked up with soup liquor. To this may be added enough black molasses to slightly sweeten the whole and then it is to be thoroughly baked over a slow fire and afterward allowed to not only cool, but partially dry, in which condition it will keep indefinitely. When it is to be fed, break it up into pieces, and feed dry or soften it with meat or vegetable soup. This food can also be improved by adding vegetables, such as carrots, turnips, beets, onions or cabbage, in the proportion of one pound of vegetables to from five to ten pounds of meat and grain.

"The sportsman owning only one or two dogs, who will condition his dogs on food prepared in this way, and who will carry with him a sufficient quantity to provide for his dogs while on a hunting trip, will be amply repaid by their superior condition, and he will never go back to the makeshift diet of table scraps that is too often resorted to.

"Dog biscuits simplify the feeding problem and the professional trainer or. sportsman who uses them as a staple diet can go on an extended hunting trip or even to remote sections of the country, where there are no conveniences for preparing food, and feel sure of his dog having a properly balanced ration. The ordinary dog biscuit contains only a small proportion of meat, hardly sufficient for a dog during the close season. When hunting or training it is advisable to have a special biscuit prepared with the proportion of meat doubled or trebled, or feed fresh meat in addition to the regular.biscuit.

"The number of meals a dog should be given daily is a matter frequently discussed. I prefer to give a light meal in the morning (fed dry), such as two or three dog biscuits or their equivalent, and a full meal at night. The morning meal should be given at least one hour before the dog is put down in the field, so as to enable the stomach juices to partially digest it. Under no circumstances should a dog be worked directly after feeding a full meal. The stomach, like all muscles and organs, requires during action an increased blood supply. During exercise the blood is drawn from the stomach and other internal organs to other parts of the body and the food, instead of being digested, lies as a heavy load with a liability to ferment and produce diarrhea or dysentery that will incapacitate the animal. Table scraps and 'pick ups,' if clean and fresh, free from fat and grease (they seldom are), may be tolerated for house or pet dogs, but the sportsman who attempts to take his dog through a hard season's hunting on such food is blind to his own and his dog's interests."