PUPPIES 



source of considerable anxiety to the dog-owner who is in 

 possession of a well-bred litter, and undoubtedly many a 

 valuable life is lost from causes which are no fault of his. 

 An irritable, nervous bitch may destroy her young ; the 

 dam may have an insufficiency of milk, or if the supply is 

 plentiful it may be of poor quality, and so the puppies 

 may starve, even though their stomachs are full ; one or 

 other of them may get out of the nest and die of cold — 

 in fact, there are many things which may happen to cause 

 the loss of, or injury to, the helpless puppies. Assuming, 

 however, that all has gone on well with the litter, the 

 owner will not have much to do until the puppies open 

 their eyes on the ninth day, by which time they will have 

 become strong enough to begin to try and crawl out of the 

 nest. He will be able then to ascertain whether they are 

 getting sufficient nourishment from the dam, as some 

 bitches' milk begins to give out or become inferior in 

 quality after the puppies have been on her for a while ; 

 and if this is the case, means will have to be adopted 

 to meet the difficulty. Under any circumstances, it is 

 desirable that the puppies should be given some extra 

 nourishment when they are about a fortnight or three 

 weeks old, so the question of additional food is only 

 anticipated by a few days. The best thing to commence 

 on is Spratt's Malt Milk, prepared as directed, and in this 

 some small pieces of puppy biscuits may be soaked. Later 

 on, when the youngsters are about a month old, gravy may 

 be substituted for the malt milk for some of the daily meals, 

 which should be frequent ; and still later some tiny pieces 

 of well-minced meat may be added if the puppies appear 

 to require additional nourishment, but this is rarely 

 necessary before they are weaned, which will be when they 

 are six weeks old. At first their food may be given them 

 in shallow saucers, so that they can get at it easily, as 

 there is sometimes a difficulty in getting them to feed until 

 they understand how to proceed, but when once they do 

 so a litter of healthy puppies will cause no further trouble 



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