10 Things You Didn’t Know About Your Dog

Dogs are some of the most amazing creatures on earth. They are loyal, loving, and protective. It’s hard to imagine life without them! Here are 10 facts about dogs that you might not have known before: 

Dogs Don’t Like Hugs.

Most dogs don’t like hugs because they’ve never been taught to tolerate them. Hugging a dog can make it feel anxious or afraid, so many owners are discouraged from doing so.

Dogs enjoy physical affection in the form of petting and brushing, but they do not like tight restraints such as hugging. This goes back to how dogs were bred to be protective; if an intruder hugged your dog, it could lead it to bite you!

Studies have shown that the more dogs are hugged, the more likely they are to bite.

It is recommended that you keep your dog at arm’s reach if you wish to hug it. This will ensure both of your safety and let them know who their owners truly are.

Dogs can Hear Sounds that Humans Cannot.

A dog’s hearing range is about 4 times wider than a human’s, so there are definitely some sounds you can’t hear.

Humans can only hear sounds that are up to 20 kilohertz, while dogs are capable of hearing sounds that are up to 40 kilohertz. This means that they can hear things that are four times higher pitched than what humans are capable of.

Dogs can hear sounds coming from much farther away than humans can.

When you are out for a walk with your dog, it might seem like they hear something before you do. This is because their hearing is much more sensitive than yours. They can pick up noises that are really far away, which means that when you’re in public, they will be completely aware of any noise that comes from a distance long before you notice it.

Dogs have About 100 Different Facial Expressions.

Just like people, dogs have facial expressions that help communicate their emotions. If someone were to look at your dog in person, they would be able to tell exactly what it was feeling.

Understanding how these expressions work can help you train them better. For example, if your dog is sad, he might sit with his ears down and his head slightly drooped. This means that if you are trying to cheer him up by offering him a treat, he will probably respond more positively if the treat is positioned above his head instead of right in front of him!

Dog facial expressions are subtle, but they are there. They are just as complex as human faces, if not more so! Dogs communicate their emotions by using their tails, ears, mouths, eyebrows, and body positions. If you learn to read the meaning behind each movement your dog makes, you will be able to interact with it much more successfully.

Dogs are Colorblind.

Most dogs can only see in shades of blue and yellow. While this might seem like it would be really limiting, dogs are actually more successful at hunting than humans are!

This is because their other senses- most notably their sense of smell- work much more efficiently than ours do. Dogs have about 220 million scent glands, while humans only have about 5 million.

Studies have shown that dogs also process visual information differently than people do. They rely on the information that they receive through their noses far more heavily when they are looking for something or someone. It has even been suggested that human vision works similarly to canine colorblindness, despite what many scientists once thought!

Your Dog’s Nose is more Sensitive than a Human’s Nose

The average human has 5 million scent receptors in his or her nose, while dogs have about 220 million! That means they have over 40 times better scent detection ability than humans do. Dogs use this sense to find prey

The average dog can smell 10,000 times better than a human. They can even smell things that are invisible to us, like certain cancer cells.

Dogs also use their noses to find missing people, drugs, bombs, and food. Since dogs’ noses are so sensitive, they can pick up on the smallest traces of these substances- even if someone tried to hide them!

Dogs have to moisten the air that they are breathing in or else their noses would dry out. Because of this, you might notice that your dog’s nose is wet sometimes!

The Average Dog Has the Mental Capacity of a 2-Year-Old Child

The average dog has a mental level equivalent to that of a two-year-old child. Dogs can problem-solve, use tools, and walk on leashes. They also respond to body language and tone, just as people do!

In fact, the reason that dogs are classified as a subspecies of wolves in the first place is due to their high level of intelligence. In the 1960s, a scientist named Stanley Coren conducted a series of tests on dog and wolf intelligence. He allowed both animals to try to open a puzzle box with food inside, and he timed how long it took them to get the treat. Wolves outperformed dogs by about 2 minutes!

However, Dr. Coren also tested a group of stray dogs who had been living on the streets instead of being properly trained or cared for by humans. The stray dogs blew away both wolves and family pets when it came time to open that same puzzle box- they were able to do it in just over a minute!

Dogs’ intelligence varies from breed to breed and by age. Puppies and senior dogs tend to be less intelligent than adult dogs in general. You can test your dog’s intelligence by tapping a panel inside an empty tissue box. If she figures out how to pull the tissues out one by one within 5 minutes, she has above-average intelligence for a dog!

Dogs Sweat Through Their Paws

Dogs do not have sweat glands on their skin, but they do have them in their paws. Because of this, dogs can keep themselves from overheating by leaving wet pawprints around the house!

Some breeds of dogs also sweat through the pads of their feet and noses. This means that all dogs actually do sweat a little bit! If you notice that your dog’s nose or paws are damp, he might be trying to cool himself off.

Dogs can sweat through their paws, but they don’t do it very often- only when the weather is really hot. Most dogs will pant to cool themselves off instead! The formula for this is simple: Panting uses up moisture that could otherwise cause your dog’s nose to dry out while sweating takes care of excess heat that cannot be dissipated by panting.

So if you’re wondering why your dog has wet paw prints everywhere, remember that it does not happen very often! The dampness should go away within a few minutes or so.

Dogs can’t Vomit Because they Don’t Have a Gag Reflex.

A dog’s throat does not have the same protective coating that humans’ throats do. If a dog eats something that makes it feel sick, its body will absorb all of the bad stuff instead of getting rid of it.

Dogs can’t vomit because they don’t have a gag reflex- what happens when people try to throw up but only dry heave instead! So if your dog ate something it shouldn’t have, make sure to take her to the vet right away. If you wait too long, it could get very sick!

25 Things You Didn't Know About Dogs

The Relationship between Dogs and Humans Goes Back Over 12 Thousand Years Ago.

Dogs and people have been living together as pets for over 20,000 to 40,000 years! Around 20,000 BC, humans began domesticating dogs because we could use them for hunting and help us guard our homes.

Around 8,000 BC, we started to realize that we can train dogs to do more than just protect- we can also put them on leashes and teach them how to herd animals. Soon after this, people realized they could train their dogs to pull sleds filled with supplies or even hunt whales with them!

In 4,000 BC, farmers in southern Eurasia were the first people who had a wagon pulled by a dog! This means that if you’ve ever taken your dog on a walk behind a bike or tied her up to a wagon and pulled her, you’re following in the paw prints of history!

In 3,500 BC, dogs were already being used on ships to help keep them from getting lost. In 2,000 BC, people had figured out that they could train their dogs to go hunt for birds or squ<irrels- and not come back until they’d caught something!

There are lots of other pieces of recorded history where we can see how important dogs were to humans. Dogs will make an appearance in Socrates’ work around 400 BC (some scholars argue that he was actually talking about pigs), and they’ll be mentioned in religious texts like the Bible

Dogs feel love and loyalty just like we do.

Dogs and humans don’t think or feel things the same way, but we’re not so different. Because of this, many people may think that dogs can’t love us back- but it’s just not true!

Studies show that as soon as a dog smells its owner’s scent ¹, his brain is flooded with the same chemicals that flood our brains when we see someone we care about.

Dogs aren’t just loyal to their owners- they’re loyal friends to everyone in their pack, including other animals and humans! Their love for us is a little different from how we feel about them, but that doesn’t mean that it’s any less real.

don’t know exactly what goes on inside our dogs’ heads the way they do with us, but if their tail wagging is anything to go by, then I think we can assume they appreciate our loyalty as much as we appreciate theirs!

Conclusion.

I hope you enjoyed this list of 10 things you might not have known about your dog. Please feel free to share these with anyone who loves dogs as much as I do, and if there are any additional facts that you know about our furry friends, please add them in the comments section below!