Except in the villages near the plains, where they are supplanted by Assamese curs, Lhota dogs are of the ordinary Naga type, black, with white chest and often one or more white paws. There are often brown and white markings on the body, and one type is entirely white with long hair. [89] The latter used to be plucked alive as white goats were and their hair used for ornaments. All dogs have names. Examples are Keri (“white paws,” lit. gauntlets), Pangri (“piebald”), Humthe (“soft-haired”), Phunyung (“red dog”), Taphuno (“stay-at-home,” lit. “hearth dog”), Mhakuk (“ditch-on-face,” i.e. with a depression over the nose), Kimung (“stay-in-the-house”), Yimo (“fool”), Okharo (“little one,” a pet name for the last-born child). The tails of all dogs are cut short, and the ears of male dogs are also clipped. The severed bits of tail are put in a cleft stick and stuck up in the house out of the way of rats, for were a rat to eat a tail the puppy to which it lately belonged would die. A Lhota feeds and treats all his dogs well, but is especially careful of his hunting dogs. They are never punished as other dogs are, the result being that they are hopelessly disobedient. It is quite common for the dogs to spoil a whole day’s hunting by going off on the wrong line and remaining deaf to their masters’ shouts. Hunting dogs are never eaten, and when one dies it is wrapped in a cloth and given decent burial outside the village. A Lhota strokes but never pats his dog. When he wants to make much of it he holds its head between his hands and allows it to lick his face, returning the compliment by dribbling onto its nose. When a bitch has puppies her owner observes five days’ “genna,” with the same restrictions as in the case of cattle and pigs. Cats (onyiro) are never kept, though they are occasionally bought in the plains and eaten. The Lhota fowl (hono) much resembles the red jungle fowl (Gallus ferrugineus), with which it often interbreeds. Crosses with the kalij pheasant (Gennæus horsfieldi) too are by no means unknown. Fowls live on what they can pick up, but never seem to wander far from home. Old baskets are put up on shelves in the mpongki for hens to lay in and hatch their chickens out of the reach of rats. The owner must take the chickens down from the basket either after sunset or before sunrise. Before doing so he puts a piece of burnt wood (or in some villages five pieces of burnt wood) into the basket and says: “When you wander may you not be lost or fall a prey to wild cat or hawk.” The egg-shells are strung on a bit of bamboo and hung up in the house, it is said in order to keep a reckoning of the number of eggs hatched in the year. [90] Nowadays pigeons (vephu) are kept by a few people. Ducks are never kept, though large numbers are brought up from the plains for food. Hunting.