584 
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. Phcebe 
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 Phoebe 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, 
THE NEW BOOK 
OF THE =DpOG; 
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.) 
