My goal in life is to be as good of a person as my dog thinks I am.

My goal in life is to be as good of a person as my dog thinks I am. 

This is my childhood puppy, Bailey. We were best friends for 14 years. Ever since I was born, there has always been at least one dog in my household and for about 10 years we had two dogs. I loved growing up with a puppy. We got Bailey when I was 5 and I helped pick her out, and she was mine and my sister's puppy. She was sweet, kind, gentle, loving, energetic, outgoing, and attention-craving. She had a personality that was one of a kind. It is amazing the bond that can be made with a dog. They are an animal that gives you nothing but all their love. They make it very easy to love them back and get really attached to.

The history of dogs is really intriguing to me. To be so closely related to the wolf, and then to be domesticated and to be bred and cross-bred in to all the varieties of dogs we see today. Today, dogs come in all different sizes, shapes, colors, and functions. German shepherds are used on police forces, and dalmatians are used by firefighters. There are dogs that are good at hunting, and even in hunting there are dogs made for retrieving birds and foul and there are other dogs that are breed to catch quick ground animals and ones that burrow.

This semester I will be exploring how and why we have types of dogs we do today. I plan on starting with the domestication of dogs and working into focusing on a few different breeds and seeing what traits came from what other dogs. The overall topic will be artificial selection and how it is possible for humans to breed dogs in such a manner to get exactly the right traits from the right dog.

I thought I would start off this blog with a list of my favorite dogs just to look at cute pictures.

#3. The Husky: These cute little guys are Siberian-huskies. They can have piercing blue eyes. They have thick double-coat of fur to keep them warm.




http://www.tadoz.com/tag/siberian-husky-puppies



#2. Shar-pei. Who couldn't love these wrinkles? This is a dog I would love to know its history. How and why did anyone want to breed for wrinkles? It seems like a kind of silly (but awfully adorable) trait to want in a dog. Does it serve a purpose?







http://www.lasharpei.com/

#1. Labrador retrievers. My family has only owned labs. They are great with kids, very smart, and can be taught many tricks.












In my next entry, I will start to explain the theories of natural and artificial selection. And then in the rest of the semester I will explore how these theories apply to dogs and how humans have manipulated the theory of natural selection and almost created artificial selection.