Breeding, Training, Management, Diseases, &c. of Dogs together with an easy and agreeable method of instructing all breeds of dogs in a great variety of amusing and useful performances : including 31 illustrations of the different breeds of dogs

New York: Published by Francis Butler, 3 Peck Slip. Very Good-. 1860. Second Edition. Hardcover. 219 & [1] & [31] leaves of plates pages; Publisher's dark brown pebbled cloth, spine lettered and decoratively stamped in gilt, covers framed with a blind-embossed "cottage" panel-frame, and a decorative device of a dog in profile at the center - stamped in gilt on the front cover, and repeated in blind on the rear. A clean copy, with chipping to the spine ends and two small areas of cloth lost on the spine, and chipping with loss along the edges and at the corners of the boards. A clean, tight copy, but the binding is fragile, and shows it. With all 31 of the full page b/w plates of dogs - (most with a humorous couplet in verse as a legend). [See OCLC: 7757738, 7 locations] Inscribed on the front paste-down endpaper in ink: "Walter D. Edmonds / From / Mr. Edward Curran / Christmas 1867." Also, with the signature of W. D. Edmonds on the front blank. Walter D. Edmonds, the father of the writer of the same name, was born January 18, 1851 [and died May 1, 1924]. His parents were John H. Edmonds (the Utica lawyer) and Eugenie Dumeaux Edmonds. One remarkable fact, recorded about 130 years later by his son was that Eugenie, Walter's French-born mother, concerned that he was small and fragile as a young boy, and wanting to secure for her son the best possible education Utica might offer, sent him for one winter to her old school -- "Miss Sheldon's Female Seminary." When she herself was a child Walter's mother had stayed on at Miss Sheldon's after the rest of her family returned to France. Miss Sheldon offered to waive the remaining school fees so long as Eugenie would agree to stay on after graduation as a teacher of French, to work off the cost of her education, (which took not quite two years). This experience led Eugenie to the decision to send her young Walter there. Evidently she did give some thought to how life might be for her son as the only boy in an established school for girls and young women. Her solution was to dress young Walter as a girl, which made his trips between home and school both embarrasing and dangerous... (once, his nose was broken by a snowball formed around a rock). His son and namesake was born nearly fifty three years after his father (1903) and wrote a memoir of his father as his last book, published about 140 years after the elder Walter D. Edmonds was born. One of the most vivid events the younger Edmonds related of his father's boyhood was the full page pencil sketch Walter the elder made of his boyhood dog, "Turbo" -- in a diary he kept during and just after the Civil War. There were also several sad entries concerning Turbo's death... "My little dog Turbo died today of a sort of Pralyses he was the best little fellow that ever lived we buryed him in my garden where he loved well to be." Turbo was "a sort of Sealyham" terrior according to Walter's son. It may not be coincidental that the one detached full page plate in this copy is the "Scotch Terrior" facing page 146 -- certainly the nearest resemblance to Walter D. Edmonds' beloved "Turbo" among the dogs illustrated. (This plate is clean, but shows just a trace of shallow chipping along the fore-edge). Many of the dogs depicted in the plates are specific individuals; the details are given by Francis Butler, who owned several of the subjects -- in the final chapter of this book. In the first edition, published by Butler in 1857, these illustrations are credited to Thomas Coulson Carpendale. There is a final "Notice" on the unpaginated verso of page 219 -- "Francis Butler, 3 Peck Slip, New York, has constantly on hand a large assortment of all the CHOICE BREEDS OF DOGS, both for sale and for stock... Below this note is an advertisement for "Butler's Mange Liniment and Flea Exterminator ... Fifty cents per bottle." There are two words pencilled by the young owner in the margins -- (one is a note: "food" adjacent to Bulter's advice about fresh meat as food for dogs; the other is the word "house-breaking" -- at the side of the text about this crucial subject). Walter D. Edmonds grew up to be a lawyer, like his father. His son wrote that he still sometimes spoke of "Turbo" in his 70's. That son, the writer, became well known for three of his novels chronicling upstate New York that his father and grandfather knew well -- 'Rome Haul,' 'Drums Along the Mohawk,' and 'Chad Hanna.' .