Know Your Dogs!

If you are a dog lover, this one is for you.

Dogs, the symbol of loyalty, bring cheer to your life and make it lively. Their stupidity is funny, their reluctance Is watchable and god! their sorry face.

Let this article guide you to know more about your dear pets.

Firstly, do you know how they came into being?

Thousands of years ago, humans developed a bonding with wolves. These ferocious beasts in search of food, developed an understanding and started interacting with human villages. Dogs started scavenging on man’s prey. The ones brave enough started entering human camps. Eventually, they realized staying with man is better than hunting themselves.

Humans benefitted from these animals as they could give barking signals, clean scraps and guard their camps. They could even help on the hunt. With years, wolves changed to what we now call dogs. They became less wild and more friendly looking to please humans.

But the wolves I’m talking about are not the wolves we see today.

Megafauna Wolf

Huge Alaskan malamute to Chihuahua, all came from ‘Megafauna wolf’. These were humongous in size and existed way back, around 30,000 years ago.

‘Megafauna’ named animals were simply, giant animals weighing over 44 kg. They existed around the last ice age. The Megafauna wolves evolved to dogs and grey wolves of the modern age.

Grey wolves still exist because they moved south and started hunting small prey. They developed their agility and became light weighted, to get faster.

So our pets don’t come from grey wolves. They share the same blood though, due to interbreeding.

Now that you know about the origin, let me address a concerning topic about them.

There is always this sad truth associated with them, a truth every dog owner finds disturbing. Their life force. They age quicker than us and leave us after a decade or so. Their age and growth are concerning.

They don’t age similar to us humans. Dog years are quite different from a human's perspective. You might have seen how fast a puppy changes to a full grown dog in a year or so.

To clarify their age with respect to human years, here is a simple chart. This chart was published by WebMD LLC and shows the age of your dog in human years.

Their life may be short. Even then, they give us so many memories to cherish.

Kudos for owning a pet.