Fourteen Trivia Tidbits

After a hiatus, we are back and better than ever. So to celebrate our return, here are fourteen interesting facts about dogs.

It is much easier for dogs to learn spoken commands if they are given in conjunction with hand signals or gestures.

Dogs like sweets a lot more than cats do. While cats have around only 473 taste buds, dogs have about 1,700 taste buds. Humans have approximately 9,000.

Dogs are about as smart as a two- or three-year-old child. This means they can understand about 150-200 words, including signals and hand movements with the same meaning as words.

Pekingese is referred to as a “sleeve” because it was bred to fit into a Chinese empress’ sleeves, which was how it was often carried around.

Puppies are sometimes rejected by their mother if they are born by cesarean and cleaned up before being given back to her.^c

The phrase “raining cats and dogs” originated in seventeenth-century England. During heavy rainstorms, many homeless animals would drown and float down the streets, giving the appearance that it had actually rained cats and dogs.

The most popular male dog names are Max and Jake. The most popular female dog names are Maggie and Molly.

Scholars have argued over the metaphysical interpretation of Dorothy’s pooch, Toto, in the Wizard of Oz. One theory postulates that Toto represents Anubis, the dog-headed Egyptian god of death, because Toto consistently keeps Dorothy from safely returning home.^d

The ancient religion Zoroastrianism includes in its religious text titled the Zend Avesta a section devoted to the care and breeding of dogs

At the end of WWI, the German government trained the first guide dogs for war-blinded soldiers.

The names of 77 ancient Egyptian dogs have been recorded. The names refer to color and character, such as Blackie, Ebony, Good Herdsman, Reliable, and Brave One.

Some dogs can smell dead bodies under water, where termites are hiding, and natural gas buried under 40 feet of dirt. They can even detect cancer that is too small to be detected by a doctor and can find lung cancer by sniffing a person’s breath.

The most intelligent dogs are reportedly the Border Collie and the Poodle, while the least intelligent dogs are the Afghan Hound and the Basenji

In 2003, Dr. Roger Mugford invented the “wagometer,” a device that claims to interpret a dog’s exact mood by measuring the wag of its tail.