Dogs go through five stages throughout their lifetime: embryonic, puppy, adolescent, adult and senior. The first 0-19 days during the embryonic stage is the start of fertilization, days 20-33 are when the legs, eye and paws begin to take shape and around day 40 the embryo has become a fetus and the heartbeat becomes noticeable. The puppy stage begins at 0 weeks and lasts until the dog is 6-18 months. It is important for the puppy to be with its mother and siblings at this stage. During this time the puppies open their eyes, start to develop senses and begin learning social interactions. Also in this stage their teeth come in, they start regulating their own body temperature, fear response starts developing and they begin walking, building up energy and developing behavior. Adolescents begins when the hormones start to kick in. Smaller dog breeds reach this stage sooner than larger dog breeds. This is also the stage where they lose their puppy fur and grow to their full adult size. If not spayed or neutered dogs will become intrested in the opposite sex at this stage. Between ages 1-3 years the dog reaches the adult stage. By this time the dogs have fully matured and are generally quite independent and responsible. The senior stage comes when the dogs are around 6-10 years old. Unlike the adolescent stage, bigger dogs tend to reach this stage sooner. Most dogs in the senior stage eat less, sleep more, move slower and their muzzles tend to turn grey. This is the last stage …show more content…
There are many significant features and characteristics of dogs. They have a high metabolism, can breathe much faster than humans, mature very quickly and have high body temperatures. They also have an extremely good sense of sight, hearing and smell. Dogs can see light and movement much better than humans can and they also have better night vision. Dog’s eardrums are about four times larger than human eardrums and therefore they have better hearing. Their sense of smell is approximately one millions times better than humans and the centre of the brain responsible for smell is 40 times bigger in dogs than people. Some concerns are that they have a poor sense of taste and a short lifespan.
7. There are many different types of dogs from many different places in the world. Some are more at risk than others and some are already extinct. Some dogs that are a “species of concern” are: the wild dog dhole, African wild dogs, the dandie dinmont terrier, Scottish deerhounds, cardigan Welsh corgis, the smooth fox terrier and unfortunately many others. For most of the endangered dogs there are less than 200 left in the world. For example, there were only 105 dandie dinmont terriers registered in 2013 (Timothy A. Clary, CBS