Scalded milk will do for the first feeding.

The next, to be given about eight a.m., should be prepared as follows : Soak in water a few pieces of stale bread that have been well baked the second time until they are dry and crisp, and crush by squeezing them through the fingers. Pour over this bread scalding hot milk to which a little sugar and a small piece of butter have been added; or instead of the bread well-boiled rice can be used, and the same is sure to be thoroughly cooked but not too much so - if left overnight in a "slow oven."

The feeding at eleven can properly be of toast softened with a little light broth.

At two, again the scalded milk and bread.

At five, a little scalded milk alone will be sufficient.

Scalded bread or rice and milk, or toast and broth, should constitute the last meal. And this and the first feeding after daylight should be somewhat larger than those between them, but in no instance should the quantity be sufficient to swell the abdomen.

These foods and these methods can properly be persisted in during the first week after weaning.

It is necessary to stop here for a time and discuss at some length the vital question of the number of meals daily for young puppies.

Upon this breeders are widely at variance, and some maintain that for all healthy puppies three meals daily are amply sufficient after the fifth or sixth week, while others contend that "little and often" should be the invariable rule.

Not impossibly a few have had fairly good success with the three-meals-daily system, and that it might do in occasional instances with the largest breeds is possible, yet there is no gainsaying that as a general thing it means failure. And for this there are many reasons.

Were but three meals a day given the first would be presumably between seven and eight in the morning and the last between six and seven at night - or at least these are the hours set by most of the advocates of the system - and the puppies would be without food not less than twelve hours. This would be none too long were they allowed concentrated and hearty foods that would "stay by" them during the greater part of this time, but their digestive organs will not at first bear food of this sort, nor in fact any other kind in quantity sufficient to occupy the stomach more than two or three hours, consequently long before the morning feeding this organ must crave food, and after it begins to do so the system generally suffers from the deprivation.

For a time the morning meal acting as a spur to the flagging powers would wholly restore them, yet this result is scarcely to be expected always, for were they to decline regularly every night some permanent loss in vigor would more than likely occur. The stomach, also, would be quite sure to rebel in time and thereafter do its work less promptly and well. Again, there deserves to be considered the danger of chilling during the long cold nights, and this is always the greatest where the stomach is empty, for then the fires of life are burning low.

This hasty glance must be conclusive when coupled with the knowledge, which all surely have, of the fact that even for the matured too long intervals between meals hazard digestion and strength, and the danger is greatly intensified where the subjects of the deprivation are very young.

But this is by no means all that can be said in opposition to the three-meals-a-day system. Follow that, and give the puppies all the food which they require for tissue and bone building, etc., and they must take more into their stomachs at these meals than they can properly digest and assimilate. In a word, they must gorge themselves - and this is one of the most ruinous practices in which they can be indulged.

Puppies that have done so and weighted themselves down with food are soon sleeping, and generally continue in this state during much of the intervals between feedings, or if awake they are dull and sluggish and disinclined to move about. And assuredly while like this their legs cannot be developing strength as they ought; moreover, their systems must be choking up with waste impurities, which inevitably accumulate where the exercise is limited unless the food is bland in character and of small amount.

It ought not be necessary to urge that the legs of very young puppies are weak and scarcely able to bear their bodies even. Now allow them to fill up continually with food or drink, and deformity is quite sure to result. And in fact did a breeder desire his puppies to become bandy-legged, weak in the pasterns and badly placed at the elbows, he could employ no surer method to effect the result than stuffing them three times a day.

Every ounce of food - every grain even - is so much weight on the legs. Let this fact be fixed; also, that while rapid growth and weight of body may be to the breeder a pleasing sight, if it passes over the line the limbs must suffer and symmetry be simply out of the question.

Considering the matter intelligently, on all sides, there can be but one conclusion, namely, that puppies while yet very young should be "fed little and often." They must not be fed until their abdomens are distended and their appetites glutted, but they must leave off eating while yet ready for more. And then, that their limbs may acquire strength and the foods they have eaten do them the greatest good, they must be kept as much of the time on their feet and as active as possible.

To this end they should be given shin bones from which at first nearly every particle of meat has been scraped; and on these they will try their teeth, fight at them, and pound their little legs for an hour or more, and then take a nap.

Note the difference between a puppy treated in this way and one that is allowed to gorge himself three times a day. The latter, weak and tottering, drags his distended abdomen into a corner and sleeps his time away on top of another like himself; but the former soon stands true and firm; instead of sleeping he is all for play, and young as he is he is biting and tugging at everything within his reach.