It is, therefore, important to study what were the good, and still more so the bad, points in the parents and grandparents.  If you do not know these, other Newfoundland breeders will willingly give information, and any trouble involved in tracing the knowledge required will be amply repaid in the results, and probably save great disappointment.

When rearing puppies give them soft food, such as well-boiled rice and milk, as soon as they will lap, and, shortly afterwards, scraped lean meat.  Newfoundland puppies require plenty of meat to induce proper growth.  The puppies should increase in weight at the rate of 3 lbs. a week, and this necessitates plenty of flesh, bone and muscle-forming food, plenty of meat, both raw and cooked.  Milk is also good, but it requires to be strengthened with Plasmon, or casein.  The secret of growing full-sized dogs with plenty of bone and substance is to get a good start from birth, good feeding, warm, dry quarters, and freedom for the puppies to move about and exercise themselves as they wish.  Forced exercise may make them go wrong on their legs.  Medicine should not be required except for worms, and the puppies should be physicked for these soon after they are weaned, and again when three or four months old, or before that if they are not thriving.  If free from worms, Newfoundland puppies will be found quite hardy, and, under proper conditions of food and quarters, they are easy to rear.

CHAPTER VI

THE GREAT DANE

The origin of the Great Dane, like that of many other varieties of dogs, is so obscure that all researches have only resulted in speculative theories, but the undoubted antiquity of this dog is proved by the fact that representatives of a breed sufficiently similar to be considered his ancestors are found on some of the oldest Egyptian monuments.

A few years ago a controversy arose on the breed’s proper designation, when the Germans claimed for it the title “Deutsche Dogge.”  Germany had several varieties of big dogs, such as the Hatzrude, Saufanger, Ulmer Dogge, and Rottweiler Metzgerhund; but contemporaneously with these there existed, as in other countries in Europe, another very big breed, but much nobler and more thoroughbred, known as the Great Dane.  When after the war of 1870 national feeling was pulsating very strongly in the veins of reunited Germany, the German cynologists were on the lookout for a national dog, and for that purpose the Great Dane was re-christened “Deutsche Dogge,” and elected as the champion of German Dogdom.  For a long time all these breeds had, no doubt, been indiscriminately crossed.

The Great Dane was introduced into this country spasmodically some thirty-five years ago, when he was commonly referred to as the Boarhound, or the German Mastiff, and for a time the breed had to undergo a probationary period in the “Foreign Class” at dog shows, but it soon gained in public favour, and in the early ’eighties a Great Dane Club was formed, and the breed has since become one of the most popular of the larger dogs.