al
strength of their families. St. Bernards have been known to produce as
many as eighteen whelps at a birth, and it is no uncommon thing for
them to produce from nine to twelve. A Pointer of Mr. Barclay Field's
produced fifteen, and it is well known that Mr. Statter's Setter
Phoebe produced twenty-one at a birth. Phoebe reared ten of these
herself, and almost every one of the family became celebrated. It
would be straining the natural possibilities of any bitch to expect
her to bring up eighteen puppies healthily. Half that number would tax
her natural resources to the extreme. But Nature is extraordinarily
adaptive in tempering the wind to the shorn lamb, and a dam who gives
birth to a numerous litter ought not to have her family unduly
reduced. It was good policy to allow Phoebe to have the rearing of as
many as ten out of her twenty-one. A bitch having twelve will bring up
nine very well, one having nine will rear seven without help, and a
bitch having seven will bring up five better than four.

Breeders of Toy-dogs often rear the overplus offspring by hand, with
the help of a Maw and Thompson feeding-bottle, peptonised milk, and
one or more of the various advertised infants' foods or orphan puppy
foods. Others prefer to engage or prepare in advance a foster-mother.
The foster-mother need not be of the same breed, but she should be
approximately of similar size, and her own family ought to be of the
same age as the one of which she is to take additional charge. One can
usually be secured through advertisement in the canine press. Some
owners do not object to taking one from a dogs' home, which is an easy
method, in consideration of the circumstance that by far the larger
number of "lost" dogs are bitches sent adrift because they are in
whelp. The chief risk in this course is that the unknown foster-mother
may be diseased or verminous or have contracted the seeds of
distemper, or her milk may be populated with embryo worms. These are
dangers to guard against. A cat makes an excellent foster-mother for
Toy-dog puppies.

Worms ought not to be a necessary accompaniment of puppyhood, and if
the sire and dam are properly attended to in advance they need not be.
The writer has attended at the birth of puppies, not one of whom has
shown the remotest sign of having a worm, and the puppies have almost
galloped into healthy, happy maturity, protected from all the usual
canine ailments by constitutions impervious to disease.