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The Dog in the House 47 
soaked in water or soup, with or without added meat. So that it will be 
seen that there is a variety of methods for feeding. 
No matter what the material is of which the mush is made, there is one 
absolute rule which must be followed, or the dogs will soon get out of shape: 
that is, thorough cooking. What the grain is or what meal may be used 
is, in our opinion, of far less consequence than the most thorough cooking. 
For two summer seasons we made the night meal of stale bread, mixed 
variously with milk, buttermilk, soup, and soup and meat. The first sum- 
mer we used ordinary stale bread got by the barrel. The dogs kept all right 
till the end of August, and then there was trouble. We should say that a 
variation was made in the evening meal by using broken biscuits soaked in 
soup or with a little meat added. 
The next year we decided to try oven-dried stale bread, fearing that 
perhaps some of the ordinary stale bread had become mouldy and had 
thus affected the dogs. The result was the same: dogs were all right until 
September, and then almost the whole kennel went wrong. We decided 
against bread as the staple for the third summer and tried broken rice as 
the main food, adopting after several trials a home-made jacket-cooker con- 
sisting of a deep tin pail which sinks to within three inches of the top in a 
straight-sided galvanised-iron wash-tub. Perhaps one of those galvanised- 
iron ash-holders might answer the purpose. With this combination the 
meat can be cooked in the jacket-boiler while the rice-mixture is boiled in 
the pail. This third year the dogs did well all through, but were rather poor 
in flesh. Late in August we added half rolled oats, but there was little im- 
provement in condition, and in October, thinking that our béte noire, corn- 
meal, might be ventured, we mixed equal quantities of rice, rolled oats and 
ground hominy, and the beneficial result was at once apparent. The dogs 
put on flesh and thrived wonderfully, and so far as we are concerned we have 
solved the problem of feeding cooked food and keeping clear of skin troubles. 
‘Our main reliance is in the perfect cooking, and for that purpose rice in the 
mixture is very essential. On one occasion we even had uncracked oats 
put in by mistake, and tried that with some misgivings, but it cooked quite 
as soon as the rice, and when that is soft and fully swollen one may depend 
upon corn-meal or hominy being done, too. The latter, unless thoroughly 
cooked, will in a month set a kennel of dogs scratching themselves to pieces. 
Whatever meat you get, have it clean and sweet. Kennels in a farming 
country can generally procure a cow or horse, and so long as the meat keeps 
