Dogs - The most ancient domestic animal

The dog is the most ancient domestic animal that exists. Since thousands of years ago it is the most obedient slave and at the same time the happy friend and the faithful companion of man.

Discoveries made in Southern Asia demonstrated the existence of domesticated dogs approximately 15 000 years ago. At the beginning, the wild dogs approximated from the villages in order to gain food. Man, sometimes, captured them for the own nourishment and possibly, for observing the behavior of the dogs that he imprisoned, he discovered that those animals were docile, intelligent and resistant, reason why he started to use them for defending the cattle from other wild animals and from strange persons.

Late in the Stone Age, it is probable that man already had discovered that the dog could make other works besides to look out for and to reunite the cattle. It accompanied man in the expeditions of hunting in order to find the track of the prey, to capture it and to take it to the hunter that rewarded it, giving to it some part of the dejected prey.

From the biological view point, the dog is a carnivorous perfectly given and among the animals from that category it is the one that possesses the most developed olfaction. A good retreater dog is able to follow the track left by an animal even after several gone days. Moreover, it possesses one excellent sense of the hearing that permits it to understand noises as much shrilled as so much weak sounds that man is unable to capture those. Generally, the dog possesses big paws, it is lean and strong. Certain races are more speedy and resistant in the race, and they are able to drag heavy burdens. However, some others possess an anatomic constitution that does not allow them to make some big efforts.

According to the own morphology they are classified as: dogs well proportioned (big and small), like, for example, the big Danish and the pinscher dwarf; and disproportionate dogs (also big and small ones), alike, for example, the dog S. Bernard, very developed, and the pug, with twisted and short paws and flattened snout.

Generally, the female of the dog is on heat during a period of three weeks, twice per year. The time of gestation is about 63 days. In the small races there are deliveries of two till five pups and in the big races, from 5 to 10. The cubs are blind during the first 10 or 12 days. The mother breast-feeds them during four weeks and one pup must have from 7 to 8 weeks before separating from it.