202 DOGS 



you that he ought only to be fed once a day, and 

 that it is more healthy for him to be kept in an 

 outhouse, with plenty of fresh air and clean straw. 

 Don't you believe that, or only believe it with 

 reservations. Boys are not given to coddling 

 either their dogs or themselves. There is nothing 

 they hold in greater contempt than an overfed 

 poodle or an asthmatic pug. If the boy is worth 

 his salt, his dog in any circumstances will be 

 in fair condition. Unfortunately no boy is his 

 own master, and his parents may have preju- 

 dices. His mother may object to muddy feet on 

 her carpets, or to shaggy coats, smelling strongly 

 of damp, stretching themselves out to dry on her 

 cushions. But if he is lucky enough to live in a 

 house where they are not over-particular, he ought 

 to learn what friendship and close sympathy really 

 mean. There are many dogs that never get a fair 

 chance, and we never know how marvellously their 

 intelligence may be developed. The sportsman 

 who only goes to his moors in August meets his 

 setters or pointers for the first time ; they have 

 been kept close prisoners for nine months in the 

 year, taken out like the captives of a penitentiary 

 for an occasional run, and the marvel is that they 

 are not idiots. The run of retrievers are left to 

 keepers, who keep them on the chain and break 

 them with the whip and the whistle. They gene- 

 rally work indifferently, but the wonder is that 

 they work at all. Look, on the other hand, at the 

 dogs of the poacher and the hill shepherd. The 



