As a result of this monopoly the sixth puppy throve apace. When she was eight weeks old, fate intervened once more to save her from the horse-pond. Mrs. Shawe’s sister had come, with her two children, to spend the summer at the farm. The children, after a glimpse of the pure-breed collie litters gambolling in the shaded puppy-run, had clamoured loudly for a pup of their own to play with.
Shawe knew the ways of a child with a puppy. He was of no mind to risk chorea or rickets or fits or other ailments, for any of his priceless collie babies; from such Teddy Bear handling as the two youngsters would probably give it. Yet the clamour of the pair grew the more plangently insistent.
Then it was that the bothered man bethought him of the illegitimate offspring of Shawemere Queen, the nondescript pup he had planned to drown within the next few days. The problem was solved.
Once more, peace reigned at Shawemere. And the two children were deliriously happy in the possession of a shaggy and shapeless morsel of puppyhood, in whose veins coursed the ancient royal blood of pure colliedom and the riotously battling strain of the pit-warriors.
They named their pet “Nina,” after a Pomeranian they had mauled and harassed into convulsions. And they prepared to give like treatment to their present puppy.
But a cross-breed is ever prone to be super-sturdy. The roughly affectionate manhandling which had torn the Pom’s hair-trigger nerves and tenuous vitality to shreds had no effect at all upon Nina. On the contrary, she waxed fat under the dual caresses and yankings of her new owners.
Which was lucky. For, while a puppy is an ideal playmate for a child, the average child is a horrible playmate for a puppy. With no consciousness of cruelty, children maul or neglect or otherwise ill-treat thousands of friendly and helpless puppies to death, every year. And fond parents look on, with fatuous smiles, at their playful offsprings’ barbarity.
Strong and vigorous from birth, Nina began to take on size at an amazing rate. Before she was eight months old she stood higher at the shoulder than any collie at Shawemere. She looked like no other dog on earth, and she was larger by far than either of her parents.
The cleverest breeder cannot always breed his best stock true to type. And when it comes to crossbreeding—especially with dogs—nothing short of Mother Nature herself can predict the outcome.