OF INTEREST AND AMUSEMENT 109 



never leaving any food with them, and just keeping 

 them in growing condition. 



"I have sent out twenty-six couples of whelps up 

 to date, not one of which has the least signs of 

 crookedness at present. Many of them are to be seen 

 now in the village, a mile or so from the kennels, 

 having their full liberty and without any bad results. 

 Some six seasons ago my kennelman was very anxious 

 to push on the whelps, which he did by feeding them 

 heavily several times a day. The consequence was 

 that we had not one single straight-legged puppy out 

 of the two litters so treated. 



"Here is further proof. I sent out four puppies, 

 by Belvoir Nailor out of a nice home-bred bitch, to 

 a foster-mother, some eight or nine miles from here. 

 I told the farmer when the puppies were three weeks 

 old that he could help them along with some milk 

 and scraps from the house. These puppies I fetched 

 home when they were six weeks old. 



" He had done them too well ; they were top-heavy 

 and crooked, and, owing to having been kept on a 

 straw-littered floor, their feet are very open. 



"For two days I gave them nothing but scalded 

 milk, and an open field to run in, and unless you 

 could see how straight they have become and how 

 their feet have rounded up it would be difficult to 

 believe it. I think they are now as straight as their 

 brothers and sisters which I had just sent out." 



The extracts which I have been permitted to make 

 from these letters, I think, should be valuable to some 

 in the " spring o' the year," when the whelps go out 

 to quarters ; but from personal experience I must still 



