“Of course he is comfortable in a way; he and Rufus, the Irish setter with red hair, have a good room together, each with a boxed straw bed, and a private yard to lie in when they are not turned into the great yard for running, but they are in chain when they sleep at night, and when they are fed, and that is a grievous thing to an old dog who has once run free, and owned his bones. My mother told me so then, but being born a kennel dog I did not understand.”
“What were the other rooms in that long house?” asked Waddles, now sitting up wide awake and interested. “I saw more doors than there are in this whole house or at Miss Jule’s, and though I was in a hurry, I sniffed good crisp brown smells.”
“Some rooms like Antonio’s are for the grown dogs that live there all the time except when they go away for hunting. Then there are others closer and warmer for the mother dogs with families; I was born in one of these, and stayed there with my little brothers and sisters until I was six weeks old, and could stand firm upon my feet without resting on my stomach. Before this, for many days, when my mother was let out for her airing, she stayed away longer and longer, and when we were hungry they gave us milk to lap from a tin, which was tiresome and took much more trouble than to eat the way our mother taught us, lying close to her where we could knead her warm sides with our paws. Finally, one night she did not come back at all. Then we were taken from our little bedroom to a great square place, all wood dust on the floor and with a great black thing standing in the middle that frightened me terribly, but afterward I found that it was called a stove, and was warm inside and pleasant to lie by, though it could not feed us as our mother did.
“In this big room were many other pups of different kinds and sizes, who played or dozed in corners, but there were none as small as we, and we felt sad and lonely. I well remember how we squealed that night until Baldy’s brother brought Miss Jule and she had us put back into our little room, but our mother was not there. Once in the night she answered as from far away; but she couldn’t come for there were many doors between. They called this weaning us, so that we should learn to care for ourselves; but if you are born free like our Jack and Jill it all happens of itself and there is no sorrow. Next day we went back to the big room with all the other puppies, and four times every day each one of us was put into a little box like a chicken-coop—there was a row of them all round the wall—and given a dish of food.”
“What was that for?” asked Waddles, “why did they shut you up? I like to walk about when I eat.”
“Because,” answered Happy, feeling proud and important at knowing something that wise Waddles did not, “if the food was given to us at once the biggest would gobble two or three shares and the small pups would get none. At the kennels grown dogs are tied when they eat, but pups wear no collars, for they are bad things for their soft necks.
“After a while we became used to the life and had good times playing in the puppy pasture. One day we saw our mother in the other enclosure with the grown dogs, and we ran close to the fence and tried to dig under it; but kennel fences are set deep with melted stone poured round the posts. When we found we could not get through we barked and wagged our tails and then even our bodies when we saw her coming toward us; but she did not notice us at all—she had forgotten us!”
“Then who taught you to play snatch-bone and wrestle, who killed your fleas for you and washed you?” asked Waddles, with indignation.
“We learned to wrestle by tumbling about together. As to snatch-bone, how could we play it, we who have no bones?”