A dog's sense of smell is about 1000 times better than a person's.

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A dog's heart beats between 70 to 120 times a minute, compared with a human heart which beats 70 to 80 times a minute.

The common belief that dogs are colour blind is false. Dogs can see colour but it is not as vivid a colour scheme as we see. It is much like our vision at twilight.

The oldest dog that has been reliably documented was an Australian cattle-dog named Bluey. He was put to sleep at the age of 29 years and 5 months!

I bet you didn't know that two dogs survived the sinking of the Titanic

Most people know that a puppy is born blind and toothless but did you know they are born deaf and with no sense of smell. They begin to see at 2-3 weeks, get sense of smell at 3 weeks and get milk teeth at 3-7 weeks.

Dogs have 42 teeth.

Do dogs dream? If you look at your dog while it's sleeping, sometimes you'll see its eyes move and twitch under its eyelids. Humans do this too, and we definitely dream. So researchers are almost positive that dogs have dreams too.

Dogs hearing is a lot better than ours. They hear high-pitched sounds (like some insects make), that we cannot even detect.

Stroking a dog on a regular basis is said to help you reduce stress levels, tension and reduces blood pressure, and the dog loves it too.

The Poodle's "haircut" was to improve their swimming abilities. The pom-poms were left to keep their joints warm !

Dogs have a visual range of 250 degrees compared to the human range of 180 degrees.

Greyfriars Bobby was a famous Skye Terrier immortalised in the Disney movie of the same name. In 1858 a man named John Gray (Old Jock) was buried in old Greyfriars Churchyard, in Edinburgh. This loyal dog slept on his master's grave for the next 14 years until his own death. A statue commemorates this most loyal of dogs.

Each year on April 8th at a ceremony in Tokyo's Shibuya railway station dog lovers do homage to the loyalty and devotion of an Akita dog called Hachiko. Hachiko was the loyal and faithful pet of Dr. Eisaburo Ueno, a professor at Tokyo University. On May 21st 1925, when Hachiko was eighteen months old Dr Ueno died. The next day and for the next nine years, Hachiko returned to the station and waited for his master before walking home, alone

Poisoning of dogs by chocolate is not as uncommon as you might think. Chocolate contains theobromine, found in cocoa beans. While amounts vary by type of chocolate, it's in all human chocolate and it's the theobromine that is poisonous to dogs. It's true that the odd bit of chocolate will probably not cause any toxic reaction but there are variables to consider like the individual sensitivity, dog size and chocolate (theobromine) concentration. What happens if your dog steels all that chocolate on or under your christmas tree...well your dog will get a toxic reaction from the poison it has eaten so you should contact your vet straightaway. The point is you don't leave bottles of medication within reach of children and you shouldn't leave amounts of chocolate within reach of your dog. Just type something like "Chocolate Toxicity" in any search engine to find out the facts and some sad truths.