One of the most noted veterinarians in New York once said to me that, if it were not for too much or too little attention, he doubted if he should ever be called upon to treat a dog. He explained his meaning by adding that the toy dogs are generally killed by kindness and most terriers die of neglect. If this is true, and this doctor has a canine practice that keeps him busy from morning till night, there must be something radically wrong with the care of most dogs.

The terriers—for the evils of a candy diet and a life spent on silken pillows do not need to be even mentioned here—the terriers can, it is perfectly true, get along with less attention than most breeds of dogs, for they all have wonderful constitutions. Does that, however, give the terrier owner a free right and license to neglect his dogs?

It is almost a joke to keep such a naturally healthy dog as a terrier in the pink of condition. All he needs is dry, clean kennels, with decent bedding; good, nourishing food at regular hours; all the fresh water he wants to drink; plenty of exercise, and a little grooming. Given these few things and a terrier will be "disgustingly well," full of high spirits, and happy as a clam at high tide. It is really so easy to keep a terrier "fit," and it means so much to the dog and his owner, whether he be a dog owner for pleasure or profit, that it is nothing less than criminal not to do so.

Kennels, bedding, food and feeding, water, exercise, and grooming—these are the things which given proper attention mean a healthy and happy dog. Let us take them up, one at a time, for it is as often ignorance as thoughtlessness that causes the trouble.

The question as to the kind of a kennel is bound to have a variety of different answers according to whether one lives in the city or the country, in the North or the South, and whether one is to keep one dog or fifty. There are, however, certain fundamental considerations that apply to any home for dogs.

In the first place, all terriers, especially those wearing those wonderful, double, weather-proof garments we call "wire coats," are best off living the simple life out of doors. This is true in any climate. I used to have all sorts of troubles with the skins and coats of my wire terriers till I just turned them out, providing them with dry, draft-proof, but unheated shelters in which to sleep and where they could escape very bad weather.

My own experience has proved to me that wire coated terriers are worlds better off for being out every day and night in the year. Even in the severest weather they do not need artificial heat, if they have a perfectly dry, draftless, well bedded place to sleep in and to serve as a shelter on very wet, stormy days. A decent kennel for any dog from a St. Bernard to a Pomeranian is dry and draft-proof, and so the terrier owner can eliminate the question of artificial heating.

The man who lives in the city should try to keep his dog out in the yard as much as possible, and, if at all feasible, let him sleep there. Dogs have an inborn instinct to "bay the moon" and terriers are supposed to be great talkers. Moreover, city backyards, since the days when town residences were hollow stone piles lined with hides to keep the wind out, have always been a favorite rendezvous for Thomas Catt, Esq., and Mistress Tabby, meetings just as hard on the nerves of a self respecting terrier as they are on those of his sleepy master. The trouble is that, while master becomes a public benefactor by hurling his shaving mug out the window, the efforts of his dog to drive away the disturbers are regarded by the unsympathetic neighbors as quite as bad as the feline serenades and battle cries. No dog will bark at night if he is in a dark, quiet place, and the terrier in the backyard will sleep like a baby if he is shut up in a box covered with burlap.

The ideal terrier kennel is an oil barrel. These cannot always be obtained, but any barrel or keg intended to hold liquids, and so made water tight, will answer. A hole, just large enough to let the dog in and out, should be cut in one end. Then the inside may be painted with kerosene and a lighted paper dropped in. This cleans the barrel and destroys any insects, and is an excellent thing to do every month or so.

The barrel ought to be painted inside and out, and to keep it from rotting on the bottom must be mounted on blocks so that it just clears the ground. Rain can be kept out of the door either by tacking a curtain of sacking over it (a dog soon learns to go through this and it can be hung up in good weather) or by making a roof of V shaped planking, which sets over the barrel, projecting in front like the eaves of a barn. Two small terriers or one Airedale can live easily in these keg kennels in summer, with an extra dog added, for warmth's sake, in cold weather.

Another kennel that is fine for terriers is one I adapted from the suggestions of a chicken owner, who used a similar box as a coop for hens with young chicks. It is a box that can be taken all apart. The floor is a raised platform against which the sides fit closely, being fastened together with hooks. The roof slants backward and is held in place by thin strips that fit just inside the walls.

This is fine for summer, but must be very carefully made to be tight enough for cold weather. Its flat floor makes it admirable for a bitch with puppies and it has the great advantage of enabling you to leave off any side you wish. Naturally, they are very easy to clean. They can be made any size or shape you wish and cost from five dollars up.

For the man who is going into a large kennel little can be said that will be broadly useful. One wants to build a model kennel of hard wood and concrete, while the next has an old chicken house to adapt to doggy uses; naturally requirements and conditions are very different.

The first thing that any kennel builder wants to see to is that he has good natural drainage and that his runs are on quickly drying ground, gravel rather than clay. Southern exposures are the favorites, and it is better to have two or three smaller buildings rather than to house all the dogs in one. In this way there is opportunity to give each building a rest once in a while, and this should be done in the case of the individual runs and pens, if not for the whole building.

Good hard wood, varnished and kept clean and well drained, is the most popular floor for kennels. Concrete is cold in winter, asphalt is far from desirable in summer, and both are hard on a dog's feet. Dirt, gravel, and ashes are very hard to clean. Cork is expensive and rots out with amazing speed.

The sleeping benches ought to be about two feet off the floor and so arranged that they can be taken down, cleaned, and set out in the sun to dry. Plenty of elbow grease, backed up with a good strong disinfectant and fresh air and sunlight, these are the secrets of a successful kennel. Cleanliness means that disease and parasites will be unknown.

Wheat or rye straw or wood shavings make the best bedding. The straw costs more than hay, but it is ten times as cleanly, lasts twice as long, and is much better for a dog's skin. Very often shavings will be given away for the carting of them, and they make a fine summer bedding, though they are not very warm for winter. Shavings, especially pine shavings, make a very poor home for fleas. Excelsior is not popular. It has a distressing habit of wadding up in hard bunches in corners, absorbs moisture, and does not dry out easily. Moss and sea weed and such beddings are dirty and hard to handle.

Food is an important item in the care of the dog. Table scraps make, in my opinion, the ideal food for a dog. In this the house pet has the advantage over his friend of the kennels, for he gets a wide variety of well cooked and nourishing food, and variety, cooking, and nourishment are the foundation of good feeding.

Dog biscuits, which are so cheap and easy to handle, are excellent in their way, but one should resist the temptation to feed them all the time. You would not like to live on beefsteak three times a day, week in and week out. Dry bread can be bought by the barrel from most bakers and is at once inexpensive and nourishing. Shredded wheat and cracker scraps can also be gotten and are useful for a change. All of these should be fed soaked in some soup.

In the winter I have found corn meal very acceptable, but the moment hot weather comes along its use should be discontinued, or skin troubles will surely result. It can either be made in a mush with milk or water, or baked into corn bread cakes.

I use a homemade dog biscuit from corn meal and meat in the following way. The meat stock is boiled over night in a kettle and the unstrained soup is used instead of water with the meal in making dough, which is put in pans of two or three inches in thickness and baked in a slow oven till hard all the way through. This will take a day. These cakes are rich and should not be fed too often, but they can be kept a month, and I never saw a terrier that did not relish them. In summer, fish boiled twenty-four hours, till the bones are all soft, makes a nice change from the meat soups of the winter.

There are many who might be called canine vegetarians, but experimenting has convinced me that meat is the best and most natural food for the dog. Sirloin does cost a lot of money these days, but hearts, lungs, heads, odds and ends of ribs, and shank bones do not cost so much, and you can always make arrangements with a butcher to save you these. Under no circumstances feed meat that is decayed. It does not have to be as fresh as you demand for your own table, if you take care to cook it thoroughly, but meat that is mouldy or rotting is poison, not food.

Most kennels feed twice a day,—a light lunch in the morning and the regular day's feed in the evening. The morning bite can be bread or biscuits with a little soup over them. The evening meal ought to be all that the dog will comfortably eat without stuffing. If any food is left in the dishes it should be cleaned away before night, and a dog who is "off his feed" should have attention.

Dogs vary as much as people in the amount they will eat. One gobbler is always thin, while a dainty eater will put on more flesh than necessary. It is the height of foolishness to pamper a dog's taste and make him an epicure, but neither is it wise to treat them all just alike.

Exercise naturally follows feeding in our consideration of the health of the dog. Exercise, and plenty of it, is the best tonic, it keeps the muscles hard and the stomach in shape; it prevents fatness, and is just play for a dog.

There is, however, exercise and exercise. To walk a dog along on a lead is exercise, but three minutes' free running is worth half an hour of "taking the dog out for a walk" after the manner of the young lady who lives in the city. Each kennel should have an exercising yard, a lot as big as possible, where the dogs can be turned out for a romp. One wants to be a little careful about leaving a lot of dogs turned out together, for their likes and dislikes are as strong as our own.

I remember with sorrow an experience of this kind. A recently purchased dog was added to a run full of home bred youngsters, and because he was older and bigger he played the bully till one bright morning three of his victims combined forces and gave him a lesson in manners. It was a lesson for his owner too, for the dog's ear was so chewed that he was ruined for showing.

The last item in the care of the dog is grooming, but it is at least as important as any of the others we have taken up. Most dogs are washed too often and not brushed often enough. Washing once in two weeks in summer and once a month in winter is all that is needed to keep a terrier clean, but he should be brushed daily.

In washing a dog start at the head with a good disinfectant soap and work backwards and downwards, for fleas make for the head when threatened with drowning and only in this way can these pests be gotten rid of. It is well to let the soap stay in the coat a few minutes, but it must be all washed out very carefully before drying the dog.

The daily grooming should consist first of a combing with a fairly fine comb to clean out matted dirt and hair. This should be followed by a sharp brushing with what is called in stable a dandy brush. The finishing touches will be a rub down with a hound glove, such as is sold in the kennel supply stores. Such treatment will keep a terrier in almost perfect show form all the time and the stimulation of the skin will be found to act as a regular tonic.

Housed in clean, draftless kennels; given good food with lots of exercise, and with some little attention bestowed on his toilet, a terrier is sure to be healthy and happy. Prevention is proverbially better than cure, and the little work of keeping a terrier well is nothing compared to the care of a sick dog. Dogs do not make very pleasant patients, and there is the added difficulty in finding out just what really ails them, for even the most intelligent of our animals cannot tell us where his aches are and how a dose of certain medicine affects him.