MAN'S BEST FRIEND

The dog has been man's best friend for thousands of years. Dogs are friendly, obedient and faithful animals. King Edward VII of England had a pet terrier named Caesar. When the king died in 1910, Caesar led the funeral procession, walking before kings and princes. After the famous composer Mozart had died, only one living creature followed his coffin to the grave. It was his faithful dog.
Many stories are told of the bravery and faithfulness of dogs. There is even a village named after such a dog. It is the village of Bethgelert (which means grave Gelert) in North Wales. According to the story that as been told in the village for many centuries, Gelert was a hunting dog belonging to Lewellyn, the great lord of the region . One his return from the hunt, lewellyn found Gelert covered with blood. Lewellyn killed Gelert. Thinking that the dog had eaten the child, Lewellyn killed Gelert with his sword. The noise awoke the baby, who had been asleep under a heap of bed coverings. The father heard his child's cry, and found him there , safe and sound . Under the bed was found a great wolf killed by Gelert. The faithful dog had saved the life of his master's child, and lost his own because of a tragic misunderstanding.

Have you seen a dog pricking up its ears? Dogs can hear sounds better than men. For this reason they make good watch-dogs. Trained dogs lead blind people and act as their eyes. In Arctic regions people are transported across the ice on sleds pulled by dogs. In 1925 Balto an Eskimo dog, carried diphtheria serum 600 miles through a snowstorm in Alaska.
Dogs are intelligent animals it is easy to train them.
A dog named Berry rescued 40 persons when they were lost in the snow on the Saint Bernard Pass in Switzerland about 150 year ago.
Dogs have also helped in scientific research. The world's first space-traveler was a dog named Laika. Russian scientists sent it up in an artificial Earth satellite in 1957 .Dogs have been film stars, too. A dog called lassie was the star in a number of American films.
Dogs can hear and smell better than men, but they cannot see so well. You may be surprised to learn that doge is color-blind. A dog sees objects first by their mowement, second by their brightness and third by their movement second by their brightness and third by their shape. A dog lives on average for about 12 or 13 years. A puppy aged six months compares in age with a child six years old. A thirteen year old child is not yet grown up, but a thirteen-year-old dog is a very old indeed.