As soon as the puppies are strong on their legs

As soon as the puppies are strong on their legs

As soon as the puppies are strong on their legs

As soon as the puppies are strong on their legs, they need more exercise and fun than the run can allow them, and now is the time to take them off the carpets, which they will never respect in after life if they have been allowed to treat them evilly as elderly babies. It is not a bad plan to let them live in the kitchen from this time forth, various things being provisional. One is, that the presiding genius will see to their little meals under your supervision; that is, you feed them four times a day, and she or he undertakes to see that no one else does so. Another, that the kitchen opens into the, or a, garden, and that the puppies can run there in the sunshine, in warm weather, and so insensibly learn manners; yet another, that it is a warm, draughtless place, with a nice corner for their sleeping basket. Some folks, whose lower regions do not answer this description, or whose servants are not amenable, may have an occupied stable at command, where the puppies can have a loose box or stall. This plan I do not recommend, for toy pups do far better in constant human companionship; but it, or the alternative one of keeping them in a room with an oilcloth floor, are all that offer themselves, failing the desirable kitchen. I have known toy pups do splendidly in a sunny little room, floored with cork carpet, provided with cosy sleeping boxes, and opening into a terrace-walk, where on all fine and sunny days they were allowed to play; but they were not too much left to themselves, and their apartment was carefully looked after, and brush and sawdust-pan kept going, just as, in my kitchen, the servants hasten to remove any unbecoming traces of their presence. This period, while toy pups are too young to be trained, too old for their mother to clean them up, and also so young as to require warmth and constant watching, is the troublesome one in their lives and the one in which so many of them die. Neglect, or dirty surroundings, are fatal to these little delicate atoms, which really call for the same attention we should give a baby; monotony being kept shut up in one small room for hours or days and lack of fresh air, carry off many; while sour milk, meals left about in odds and ends, irregular feeding, and lying to sleep in draughts, are all elements of danger. We want to give them warmth and dryness, without stuffiness and overheating; we want to give them sweet, tempting, clean little meals, regularly, four times a day, just as much as they can eat eagerly and no more; we want to give them a cosy day-bed to go to sleep whenever they feel inclined which will be often and, lastly, to let them have all the fresh air and out-of-door sunshine they can get without fear of chill. Thus it is that summer puppies, born in the spring, with all the best weather before them, do so much better than those which have the critical teething period to pass through in winter time.