BREEDING AND WHELPING 323 



fifteen, and it is well known that Mr. Statter's Setter Phoebe 

 produced twenty-one at a birth. Phoebe reared ten of these 

 herself, and almost every one of the family became celebrated. 

 It would be straining the natural possibilities of any bitch 

 to expect her to bring up eighteen puppies healthily. Half that 

 number would tax her natural resources to the extreme. 

 But Nature is extraordinarily adaptive in tempering the wind 

 to the shorn lamb, and a dam who gives birth to a numerous 

 litter ought not to have her family unduly reduced. It was 

 good policy to allow Phcebe to have the rearing of as many 

 as ten out of her twenty-one. A bitch having twelve will 

 bring up nine very well, one having nine will rear seven with- 

 out help, and a bitch having seven will bring up five better 

 than four. 



Breeders of Toy-dogs often rear the overplus offspring by 

 hand, with the help of a Maw and Thompson feeding-bottle, 

 peptonised milk, and one or more of the various advertised 

 infants' foods or orphan puppy foods. Others prefer to 

 engage or prepare in advance a foster-mother. The foster- 

 mother need not be of the same breed, but she should be 

 approximately of similar size, and her own family ought to be 

 of the same age as the one of which she is to take additional 

 charge. One can usually be secured through advertisement 

 in the canine press. Some owners do not object to taking 

 one from a dogs' home, which is an easy method, in con- 

 sideration of the circumstance that by far the larger number 

 of " lost " dogs are bitches sent adrift because they are in 

 whelp. The chief risk in this course is that the unknown foster- 

 mother may be diseased or verminous or have contracted the 

 seeds of distemper, or her milk may be populated with embryo 

 worms. These are dangers to guard against. A cat makes 

 an excellent foster-mother for Toy-dog puppies. 



Worms ought not to be a necessary accompaniment of 

 puppyhood, and if the sire and dam are properly attended 

 to in advance they need not be. The writer has attended 

 at the birth of puppies, not one of whom has shown the 



