10 Fun Facts About Our Best Friends

Dogs are cute and cuddly creatures who love to play. They make wonderful companions and are the most popular house pet in the world. They are loyal to their humans and are just as important as our other family members. Learn more about your favorite canine friend with these paws-itively delightful canine facts and trivia.

Check out these fun canine facts and trivia, There are 18 muscles that control a dog's ears, and each ear moves independently of the other.

A dog's nose has up to 300 million olfactory sensors (50x as many as us!) And their nose is between100,000 and 100 million times more sensitive than ours.

There are more than 350 dog breeds around the world, although the American Kennel Club only recognizes 199 breeds. 

Puppies are born deaf. but within a month they can hear four times the distance of humans, and at frequencies up to 45,000 Hz (twice as high as us).

Your dog produces only 13 of the 23 amino acids that make up the building blocks of protein; the rest need to come from his diet.

There are about 900 million dogs on Earth - but about 75% are strays, street, or village dogs.

Why do dogs roll in stinky stuff? It could be a holdover from their hunter scavenger days when they needed to mask their scent from prey.

A dog takes in much of her surroundings through the nerve endings in her paws. 

The average dog can learn approximately 165 words, while the smartest breeds (like border collies) understand about 250 words.

Short-nosed dogs, like pugs or shar-peis, have better close- up vision, while dogs with long noses, like greyhounds, have better panoramic and peripheral vision.