About Dogs Dog And Cat Brochure11

The dog (Canis lupus familiaris,[2] pronounced /ˈkeɪ.nis ˈluːpəs fʌˈmɪliɛəris/) is a domesticated subspecies of the gray wolf, a mammal of the Canidae family of the order Carnivora. The term can also be used more generally to encompass any member of the biological family Canidae, the subfamily Caninae or the genus Canis (also called "true dogs"). When referring to Canis lupus familiaris, the term is used to specify both feral and pet varieties. The domestic dog has been one of the most widely kept working and companion animals in human history.

The domestication of the gray wolf took place in a handful of events roughly 15,000 years ago in central Asia. The dog quickly became ubiquitous across culture in all parts of the world. Dogs became extremely valuable to early human settlements. For instance, it is believed that the successful emigration across the Bering Strait may not have been possible without sled dogs.[3] As a result of the domestication process, the dog developed a sophisticated intelligence that includes unparalleled social cognition and a simple theory of mind that is important to their interaction with humans. These social skills have helped the dog to perform in myriad roles, such as hunting, herding, protection and more recently assisting handicapped individuals. Currently, there are estimated to be 400 million dogs in the world.[4]

Over much of the 15,000 year span that the dog has been domesticated, the dog had diverged into only a handful of landraces. Environmental factors and functional roles shaped their morphology and behavior, but humans did not take an active, intentional role in this process. In the last few hundred years, as the modern understanding of genetics has developed, humans have intentionally bred dogs for a wide range of specific traits. Through this process, the dog has developed into hundreds of varied breeds, and shows more behavioral and morphological variation than any other land mammal.[5] Height measured to the withers ranges from a few inches in the Chihuahua to a few feet in the Irish Wolfhound; color varies from white through grays (usually called blue) to black, and browns from light (tan) to dark ("red" or "chocolate") in a wide variation of patterns; coats can be very short to many centimeters long, from coarse hair to something akin to wool, straight or curly, or smooth.[6] It is common for most breeds to shed this coat, but non-shedding breeds are also popular.

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