My friend Ryan possesses an amazing mental repository of animal facts. I had hoped to use this section of Vanessa Berry World for him to share some of these peculiar details. He is currently on assignment in the Czech Republic , so in lieu of Ryan we will have to make do with an excerpt from Animal Life of the World, the freshest animal facts from 1934.

From Dogs by Cecily M. Rutley From earliest times dogs have played a prominent part in the life of Man. The Ancient Egyptians held them in the greatest veneration. They were looked upon as emblems of the divine being, and figures of dogs appear in the friezes of the majority of the Egyptian temples. When a dog died in a family all the members shaved themselves as a sign of grief and mourning! This veneration and love may probably have arisen from the fact that the all-important annual overflowing of the waters of the Nile , upon which the fertilising of so much of the land depended, coincided with the appearance of a certain star, Sirius. Because its apparent protection and watchfulness over them were similar to those of the dog, the Egyptians named it the “dog-star,” and worshipped it. The Ethiopians even went as far as to elect a dog for their king! They looked upon its fawning as a sign of approval of their actions and government, and its growl as the reverse.