Dog Breeds

Highly trained dogs are used by police forces throughout the world, for patrol duties and crowd control. They are trained to track and pursue suspects and taught how to arrest law breakers. Police and security dogs patrolling building sites and vital installations are generally more effective in the prevention of crime than sophisticated burglar alarms. […]

The discovery at Ein Mallaha provides remarkably early evidence of the dog’s symbolic association with death. It also demonstrates the importance primitive man attached to one of the dog’s outstanding qualities: its single minded loyalty and devotion to human beings. It seems likely that Stone Age people like their descendants, valued the emotional rewards of

In Western cultures the dog is the proverbial symbol of fidelity, a reputation it has acquired by its habit of remaining faithful to one owner regardless of circumstances. One of the best known examples of this phenomenon was provided by a Skye Terrier called Greyfriars Bobby, which in 1858 joined his master’s funeral procession and

In some societies the dog acquired a complex religious role. Probably the best known example is the ancient Egyptian jackal-headed god Anubis, often depicted as dog or even wolf-headed. Among other things Anubis presided over [the process of embalming or mummification, by which means the ancient Egyptians sought to ensure resurrection and eternal life for

Mammals such as goats, sheep, pigs and cattle owe much of their success and popularity as domestic species to the fact that they or their products are edible and can be farmed on a commercially viable basis. Few people would regard the domestic dog in the same light, despite the fact that dog meat is

Most domestic dogs bark when alarmed or excited, and some react to the slightest disturbance with a veritable storm of hysterical yapping. By comparison, the barking of wolves is subdued and infrequent, occurring only in moments of intense excitement or in response to threatening Intrusions, usually by other wolves, into the home range or territory.

Throughout many of the poorer regions of the world, feral or stray dogs play an important role as urban scavengers. Some authorities have suggested that this useful habit may have been the original reason for domestication of the wolf. There is evidence for and against this suggestion. It is known that wolf domestication coincided with

Not all polygenic characters can be classified into grades; some, such as epilepsy, are all-or-nothing traits in that the dog is either normal or abnormal. Such traits, known as threshold traits, are difficult to work with but can respond to selection. Anyone purchasing a dog in a breed in which polygenic defects are common should

The first stage of any breeding program is selecting the dog, the second deciding which dog to mate to which. Cross-breeding is the most effective for farm livestock, but dog-breeding is greatly influenced by pedigree. In pure breeding, mating is between unrelated animals of the same breed (out bred) or with closely related animals ‘of

Polygenic characters tend to follow a pattern in which most individuals under study fall around the center or mean, with fewer at the two extremes. Taking wither height as an example, there are few really small animals of a particular breed and few really large ones, with most around the middle height. The number of