DOGS AND TITLES

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 129, 4 June 1927, Page 20

DOGS AND TITLES

Beauty parlours for dogs, to which exception has recently been taken, have been established for many centuries in tho Far East. Under tho late Empress Dowager of China, however, the palaco institution assumed tho importance- of a department of State (says

the "Glasgow Herald"). Over a hundred Pekingese! dogs wore tended with infinite care. Every effort was made to stub their tiny button noses, which were stroked and massaged daily, and to acquire the admired flatness of face' tho animals were encouraged to chew a piece of leather atretehed tightly on a drum. So that each dog might become fastidious in its habits, and worthy of its rank as, an Imperial dog, tho Empress issued the following decree:— "Shark's fins and curloy livers and breasts of quail, on these may it be fed and for drink give it the tea that is brewed from the spring buds of the shrub that groweth in the province of Hankow, or the milk of antelopes that pasture in tha Imperial parks. Tims shall it preserve its integrity and self-respect, and for the day of sickness let'it be anointed with the clarified fat of the leg of a sacred leopard, and give it to drink a throstle's eggshell full of the juice of the custard apple, inwhich has been dissolved thrco pinches of shredded rhinocerous horn, and apply to it piebald leeches." But there is no record of honours being given to these dogs, a practice instituted in China about 168 A.D., by the Emperor Ling Ti. Upon his favourite dog was bestowed the official hat of the OliowHsion grade—the highest literary rank of the period—and others weroraised to the dignity of K'ai Pu, nearly that of a jVdceroy. ___ "