MODERN SEA-DOGS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3129, 7 August 1922, Page 8

MODERN SEA-DOGS.

On the boat deck of a. great modern Atlantic liner you will find, in the course of your wanderings round the floating township, a small door with, above it, a metal label on which is inscribed the one word “Kennels.” Your alert mind will at once think of dogs, but it will not, as readily, think of the ship’s butcher. Nevertheless, without any implied joke about sausages, the ship’s butcher has a great deal to do with those kennels. It is into his charge that all live-stock on board is committed, and a Pekingese is as much live-stock as a pig in the eyes of the law. The kennels of a great liner house plenty of animals other than dogs. A White Star liner a few weeks ago took across to New York two lion cubs. They belonged to Mr H. Shaw, curator of the museum at Oakland, California, who had spent months studying wild life in East Africa. Their mother was dead, but the two cubs were being taken back as trophies of the chase. One was as mild as a kitten, the other often tempted the ship’s butcher to exercise his art and test the chef in the grilling of lion steaks. He was a little terror. But the kennels are stoutly built. The iron bars of them would test the strength of a bigger beast than a lion cub, even though ho were the size of a. mastiff. Many extremely valuable dogs cross, the Atlantic in the ship’s kennels, animals whose lives are insured almost as highly as those of the passengers on the decks below. Mastiffs, Great Danes, and Pomeranians that have won championship after championship, travel in the kennels to new triumphs in the United States. . The kennels in the Majestic are a dozen in number, steam heated and; kept at an even temperature, throughout the trip. They are lighted by electric light, and the dogs are exercised! regularly along the open spaces of the boat deck. The feeding of the animals is as regular as the most exacting breeder could demand, and their quarters far uiore snug than those of many & haraworking watch-dog or .shepherd's collie. Most of them thoroughly enjoy the trip across. The others —well, even for their masters there is little that science can do against seasickness. They have to stick it. ____