Andrew Schrauben

One question that sometimes gets asked of people who volunteer for dog welfare organizations is "Why dogs?" What they usually mean is: Why devote so much of your time and energy to saving dogs, when your efforts could be spent saving children or sick people or those in poverty? Aren't people more important than dogs?

Every person has their purpose, and every living thing has its place in this world. Somebody has to take care of the dogs, and I want to be one of those people. Ever since I first visited a humane society in 5th grade, I concluded that dogs not only need our help, they deserve it. In fact, we owe it to them because we made them who they are; we created them to be dependent on us. We can't just ignore them when they become a burden.

Dogs need humans. Wolves don't. What's so special about dogs? Over the past thousands of years humans have domesticated dogs to the point that, I believe, dogs expect humans to be in their lives. Many dogs couldn't survive in the wild; those that could, wouldn't be as happy. I've always believed that, and recently I found a study that puts some science behind my belief.

A researcher discovered that dogs instinctively respond to human gestures and other such physical cues. Wolves don't respond to us like dogs do. In fact, not even chimpanzees - our closest genetic relatives - interpret our gestures the way that dogs do innately. Follow the link below to a video on National Geographic's site to see a demonstration of this study.

National Geographic Video: How Dogs Became Man's Best Friend

Note: I had to use Internet Explorer to view the video - I couldn't make it work with my usual Mozilla Firefox. The study I'm referring to is in the second half of the video, so be patient; although the first half is pretty interesting, too.

The next time your dog responds to your body language, think about how and why it could be that another species of animal instinctively understands you. No wonder we love dogs!