ON FEEDING TOYS
In feeding toys, variety is essential, and it is also desirable to give
them food which will nourish and support the constitution without
fattening them unduly, or heating the blood. It is far better to give a
toy a very small dinner, as far as bulk is concerned, of roast meat cut
up; or a little boiled mutton and rice; or a bit of cutlet minced, than
to give a much larger dinner of rice and biscuit flooded with milk or
soup. Big, sloppy meals are most undesirable, and the last meal at
night, above all, should be dry. Half a penny sponge cake makes an
excellent supper for a toy dog, or a couple of Osborne biscuits. Toy
dogs should never be given any biscuit containing oatmeal or Indian corn
meal, or peameal. These two are much used in dog-biscuit making, on
account of their cheapness, and they are both too heating for toy dogs,
and, in quantity, indigestible, although oatmeal is occasionally
valuable, as in the form of groats, to be made into milk gruel and given
to bitches after confinement. Rice, well boiled, is used as a staple, to
give bulk to meals, by all breeders of Yorkshire terriers, and it is a
valuable food, for this purpose, for it does not fatten, and is as
easily digested as any cereal can be. Although I advocate small, dry
meals as against large, sloppy ones, I do not mean to say that a certain
amount of bulk is not desirable--it is, for without it there would not
be the natural stimulus of distension to the intestinal canal. But
although the dog has a very large gullet and can swallow, and wishes to
swallow, very large quantities as compared to its size, its stomach is
not so very large in proportion, and the _juste milieu_--enough and not
too much--is easy to ascertain. Eating between meals is quite as bad for
dogs as for babies. They should be fed regularly, and restrained from
picking up bits out of doors--which may be poisoned, and are sure to be
unwholesome. Many dogs have a shocking habit of scavenging, which often
means that they are anaemic and harbour worms; if a tonic and worm dose
does not mend matters, a muzzle will.
A toy dog of 5 lbs. or 6 lbs., which has a biscuit at breakfast time, a
varied and tempting meal of meat or fish at lunch, and a piece of stale
sponge cake in the evening, is being reasonably fed, and should have a
healthy appetite. It is a mistake to feed only once a day, as such
treatment is only suitable for dogs so far in a state of nature that
they can gorge themselves to their fullest and sleep for hours
afterwards; and then take hard exercise.
It is quite a modern theory that the sins formerly laid to the charge of
meat are all unproven, but it is a perfectly just one. Not only do skin
complaints arise from malnutrition, or from improper feeding, or a too
large amount of starchy food, but a cure for them is frequently found in
changing the diet to one of raw or underdone _meat only_. This is modern
veterinary practice, as set forth by the cleverest man of the day--Mr.
Sewell--and others whose ability is unquestioned; in the olden times the
vet's invariable dictum, whether he understood the case or not--and
generally he was in dense ignorance as to whether mange, eczema, or
erythema was the trouble--was "No meat!" This idea, like others
primarily due to ignorance, dies hard, and these are still to be found
people who, ignoring the way a dog's teeth are formed, pronounce his
proper diet to be farinaceous, notwithstanding the fact that he was
created among the carnivora. Of course, we cannot keep a house pet,
altered by centuries of evolution, just as Nature kept him, on raw
flesh--for one thing, because he is not living the same sort of life;
but the conditions are not so different as to have turned a flesh-eating
animal into a graminivorous one.
I write, as I feel, strongly on this subject; for many a time have I
been vexed to see how obstinacy in compelling a dog to live on utterly
unnatural food, has made a miserable creature of one that would have
been happy, properly fed; and the same applies to many a litter of
puppies.
It has long been a common habit to feed puppies on sloppy, farinaceous
food, even up to the time when they are well on in getting their
permanent teeth; if this is a mistake with larger dogs, it is a grievous
folly with toys. People feed their pups four or five times a day on
watery bread and milk, Indian corn meal and oatmeal, and powdered
biscuit, all slopped with milk; they may even leave it about all day.
Some of the puppies, the greedy ones to wit, nearly burst themselves,
whereupon Nature rebels and relieves the pressure by means of diarrhoea;
others, dainty feeders, are sickened after one or two doses, and can
hardly be got to feed at all. They loathe their food, and getting them
on is a constant worry; presently they begin to be often sick (this is
the stomach's protest against being constantly distended with liquid
food) and if they have, as most puppies have, the ova of worms inside
them, these are immensely encouraged to develop, and lose no time in
doing so. A nice preparation for the critical period of teething!
If those who find toy puppies difficult to rear thus, would forsake
slops and feed them rationally, they would, I think, share the success
of a number of breeders, whose toys are noted for their health and
beauty, and whose methods I rely upon to back up my contention. Up to
the time the puppy can use its first teeth, give it nothing but milk,
pure, sweet, fresh, and _warm_ mixed with plasmon or any other good
dried milk powder; cold milk will give the baby colic. Teach it to lap
from a saucer of warm milk; either good cow's milk, if you can rely on
getting it free from boracic acid; pure cream and hot water to the
thickness of milk; goat's milk, best of all; or, in the last resource,
condensed milk, thinned with hot water.
The latter must be the kind which is not over-sweetened, and _not_ the
kind which has had the cream separated. Up to six weeks I find my
puppies do best on milk only; when their little teeth are through, and
their mother forsakes them, get them on to solids. A puppy loves to gnaw
a lump of stalish sponge cake, or suck a rusk; it comforts him to use
his sharp little needlepoints--feeds and amuses him at once. Let him
then have milk for breakfast and tea; an Osborne biscuit broken up, a
rusk of the kind known as "tops and bottoms," just softened with a
little drop of milk, not made into a slop, or a bit of sponge cake, for
his dinner and supper. At four weeks he may have a little minced chicken
or boiled fish for dinner, or shredded boiled mutton; at two months he
may be fed like his elders, but with no big lumps of meat. All meat
given to puppies should be cut up finely, until they are six months old.
As to bones, a big bone is good for a puppy to suck and gnaw; but he
must not have any kind of bone which he can swallow in whole or part.
For grown-up toys any bones, but those of chicken, game, and fish, are a
permissible treat, one at a time, and that time at least a week from the
next or the last.