English and French cookery

With a 1 dainty feeding ’ puppy, who shows repugnance to diet other than he particularly fancies, it is equally essential to conquer. Perhaps the surest and safest way to accomplish this is to leave an option between broken fibrine cake and enjoying the pangs of hunger. Pup’s decision is certain. Cat’s meat should never be given dogs, although some like it well. Apart from the constant hazard of infection it entails, horseflesh is commonly salted to prevent it turning putrid, especially in summer. It is then injurious, besides causing the breath to smell unpleasantly. For pet-dogs its use should be absolutely tabooed. In a sense, but only in a sense, the dog is omnivorous. By this we mean that collectively dogs eat almost anything, whereas individual tastes widely differ. Some animals display a predilection for one sort of meat, others for some other sort. Some, again, are disposed towards fish, bread, fruit, pastry and sweets. A pug-dog lying at our feet goes visibly into ecstacies over bread-and-cheese. Similarly, dogs who have been reared upon Spratt’s Puppy Pood and biscuits usually prefer and thrive best on that firm’s patent fibrine cakes, which Mr. Hugh Dalziel — now the chief authority upon dogs— has pronounced, in summing up the merits of the various foods, as the best all-round dietary for the canine race — an opinion our experience fully endorses. In these cakes, beetroot is skilfully blended in scientific proportions with American beef fibrine, oatmeal, wheat flour and dates ; beetroot, alone among vegetables, retaining its properties unimpaired when made into biscuit, thus guarding against irregularity, a common disorder with household pets who so often miss the invigorating matutinal run. In feeding, give a light breakfast of Spratt’s meat biscuits, dry, (for small dogs break up into little pieces) and in the evening a full meal of the same soaked in hot broth, milk, or Swiss milk and water, while to obviate satiety from too constant sameness in diet, either clean paunch, sheep’s heads, fresh bullock’s liver or rich bones may be occasionally boiled with the biscuit, and a little well-cooked cabbage or other vegetable and fat added. Much fat, however, is bad for dogs. Most animals will express their ready agreement with these changes which invariably prove beneficial, nor will they resent a rough bone or two during the mid-day. The main reason for administering the biscuit dry, is that since the quadruped is compelled to masticate it well, a copious flow of saliva gets mixed with the food, and the work thrown upon the digestive organs is thus materially diminished. Gnawing hard substances moreover, preserves the teeth. When feeding on soft food is persisted in decay soon occurs.