Maltese have a good many friends

Maltese have a good many friends

Maltese have a good many friends

Maltese have a good many friends. These are the oldest of all lap dogs, and a good specimen, with perfectly straight hair which is, however, but seldom found is really a thing of beauty. They should be treated like Yorkshire terriers, except that some of the ever-recurring tubs may be avoided by dusting flour or violet powder (pure starch) into the coat and well brushing it out again. They are often spoiled by brown noses, which are a great handicap, and also by the brown marks caused by running of the eyes, which are a great disfigurement in a white dog. Here I may break off to remark that these marks would also spoil white toy Poms, but for the fact that white toys of that breed are scarce. Breeders have done their best to get them, and a good many small ones under 6 lbs. have been bred, but the tiny whites shown are generally deficient in some point. Of toy whites, over 6 lbs. and under 8 lbs., there are now many, and good; especially in a certain west-country kennel; but some of the best are dangerously near the limit of weights.

The "tear-channels" which led to this digression can be helped not to exist by using a boracic acid lotion to the eye; but the stains are often ineffaceable.