It was very easy for Happy to give Jack his bath, but with Jill her patience was sorely tried. When it was time to do her back she would roll over and kick her legs in the air, chew her mother’s ear, or make a tug-of-war rope of her tail. Then, when the bath was completed all but her fat little stomach, she would grind it into the dirt and brace her paws, until her mother, quite out of patience, with a twist of one paw would lay Jill on her back with a growled rebuke and a curious threatening expression of face which she made by turning back her upper lip from her teeth, as both fighting dogs and wolves do when freeing their jaws to bite.
At three weeks old Jill had developed a shrill bark full ten days in advance of her brother. At four weeks she succeeded both in catching her own tail and in washing some mud from her hind paw very neatly.
When Jack attempted to do the same he only tumbled backward out of the nursery door into the water dish, aided by a push from his sister, who then rolled frantically about the floor in glee, while his mother roused from her one-eye-open doze and seized the opportunity to give him an extra bath.
When the twins were six weeks old Happy began their education in earnest. Kennel puppies are usually weaned about this time and are separated from their mother, so that instead of being trained by her to act and think for themselves, they only learn, often through punishment, blind obedience to rules they do not understand. Of course this sort of puppyhood does not make as clever a dog as the other.
Waddles himself was an example of early training by his mother, who, being a poor widow with a large family and owned by a very unsuccessful truck farmer, had great difficulty in making both ends meet; consequently Waddles and his brothers and sisters were taught very early to shift for themselves.
It was owing to his patient cleverness in catching a small squirrel by the roadside that Waddles, when only four months old, had attracted the attention of Anne’s father, who bought him from his owner for five dollars. As Anne once said, it seemed strange that five dollars could buy so much when often one got so little for it; and then as she grew to love him as a friend she did not like to think that he was bought at all, for it did not seem right to sell such as he without his own consent.
After learning to be clean, the second lesson that Happy taught the twins was how to keep cool. Anne knew very well that dogs do not perspire like people, but only by the moisture that drips from their mouths, so that they need plenty of cool water to drink and shady places to lie in if they are to be comfortable in hot weather. She also knew that Waddles and Lumberlegs dug themselves holes in the dirt, as she thought to keep off the flies; but why Happy should try to burrow under the foundation of the nursery puzzled her. It was not to bury bones, for the chosen spot for that was far away from home.
To help her, as well as to see what she would do, Anne loosened two or three stones from the foundation of the tool house that stood next to the kennel, much to Happy’s delight, who then began to burrow furiously, throwing the dirt behind her with her strong front paws.
All day long she worked, while as soon as the dirt ceased coming out at the mouth of the burrow Anne could hear it flying up against the floor of the tool house, which, by the way, her father also used as a dark room for developing photographs. Late in the afternoon Anne heard Happy whining by the outside wall. She had kept at work all day, only leaving to feed the pups who at this time varied their milk diet with a dinner of puppy biscuit soaked in weak soup. Anne loosened a couple of stones at this side as well, and in a very few minutes Happy dug herself out and circled about, barking with every symptom of joy. But when Anne was about to replace the stones, the little beagle thrust herself between her mistress and the burrow in the same way as she had come between Waddles and the pups, when he came to look at them.