On feeding toys

On feeding toys

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 anæmic and harbour worms; if a tonic and worm dose does not mend matters, a muzzle will.