584 



THE NEW BOOK OF THE DOG. 



the greatest amount of brain and intelli- 

 gence are generally the most prolific as to 

 the number of puppies they produce. St. 

 Bernards, Pointers, Setters are notable for 

 the usual strength of their families. St. 

 Bernards have been known to produce as 

 many as eighteen whelps at a birth, and it 

 is no uncommon thing for them to produce 

 from nine to twelve. A Pointer of Mr. 

 Barclay Field's produced 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 extra- 

 ordinarily 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 

 without help, and a bitch having seven will 

 bring up five better than four. 



Breeders of Toy dogs often rear the over- 

 plus offspring by hand, with the help of a 

 Maw and Thompson feeding bottle, pep- 

 tonised 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 addi- 

 tional 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 consideration of the circum- 

 stance 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 con- 

 tracted 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 remotest sign of 

 having a worm, and the puppies have 

 almost galloped into healthy, happy 

 maturity, protected from all the usual 

 canine ailments by constitutions impervious 

 to disease. He has seen others almost 

 eaten away by worms. Great writhing 

 knots of them have been ejected ; they have 

 been vomited ; they have wriggled out of 

 the nostrils ; they have perforated the 

 stomach and wrought such damage that 

 most of the puppies succumbed, and those 

 that survived were permanently deficient in 

 stamina and liable to go wrong on the least 

 provocation. The puppy that is free from 

 worms starts life with a great advantage. 



(Photograph by T. Reveley, Wantage.) 



