Next in importance to spinach I place carrots and cabbage, boiled up with the meat and rice, oat meal and occasionally corn meal.  Don’t be afraid to give a good quantity of the sliced boiled carrots, especially in the winter season when the dogs cannot obtain grass.

A short time ago, I went to see a group of trained monkeys and dogs perform.  They both looked in beautiful condition, and on enquiring of the proprietor as to his methods of feeding, he said it was a very easy matter, as he had trained both dogs and monkeys to eat raw carrots while on the road, during which time he had to feed dog biscuits.  When at home in New York he fed a vegetable hash with sound meat and rye bread, using largely carrots, beets, a very few potatoes and some apples.  While on the road he had no facilities for cooking for his animals so he accustomed them to eating cut up raw carrots every other day.  Previous to this he was bothered with skin trouble with both dogs and monkeys.

[Illustration:  Champion Dean’s Lady Luana]

[Illustration:  Mrs. William Kuback, with Ch.  Lady Sensation]

The food problem at the present time is a very serious one.  The high cost of all sorts of food of every variety should force those breeders who have been keeping a very inferior stock to make up their minds once and for all that it takes just as much time and cost to raise “mutts” as it does the real article.  Weed out the inferior stock that never did or will pay for their keep.  Keep half a dozen good ones that will reproduce, if bred rightly, their quality, if you have not plenty of room for a large number.  To those fanciers who only own two or three, sufficient food is usually furnished from the scraps left from the table, supplemented, of course, with dog biscuit.

Many kennel-men, who have a large number of dogs to feed, obtain daily from hotels or boarding houses the table scraps, and this makes an ideal food.  We fed quite a large number of dogs for several years in this way with perfect success.  I know of a large pack of foxhounds that are fed from the same food furnished by a large hotel.  Fish heads boiled with vegetables make a good diet—­be sure there are no fish hooks left in them, and the scraps from the butchers that are not quite fit for human consumption make ideal food when cooked with rice or vegetables.  Be careful they are not too old, however.  When skimmed milk is obtainable at the right price, with waste stale bread, it makes a well balanced ration for occasional feeding.  A few onions boiled up with the feed are always in order.

I think the subject of “Tails” requires more than a passing mention here.  All observers at the recent shows must have noticed the tendency toward a lengthening in many of the tails of the dogs on the bench.  Some dogs have been awarded high honors which carried “more than the law allows”, owing doubtless to their other excellent qualities.  While I personally believe in a happy medium, never lose sight of the fact that a good short screw tail has always been, and, I believe, will always remain a leading characteristic of the American dog.