Canine Anatomy: What’s Under the Fluff?
A Peek Inside Your Pet
When your dog sprints after a ball, does a wiggle happy dance, or snoozes with their paws in the air, there’s a whole puzzle at work beneath the fur. Bones, muscles, and organs are like carefully connected pieces; each one doing its bit to keep your dog dancing, digging, digesting and dreaming!
Vets are like expert puzzle solvers; they don’t just check the outside, they learn how each piece fits together inside. That’s what anatomy is all about! Understanding how the body works from the inside-out!
*If you’re a Young Vets Club member and you’ve been working through the “What’s Under the Fluff?” page from your latest magazine challenge, it’s time to check your work.*
Here are the parts you were asked to label, plus a little bit about what each one does:
Brain – This is the control centre of the body. This is what helps your dog think, feel, bark, and even break wind! It sends messages through the spine to tell the rest of the body what to do.
Spine – Made up of small bones called vertebrae, the spine protects the spinal cord (the rope of nerves which carries the messages from the brain). It also helps to move the back, neck and tail.
Lungs – These fleshy sacks in your dog’s chest work like bellows to suck oxygen in, and push carbon dioxide out. You can see them expand and retract really fast when your dog pants, or big and slow when in a deep sleep.
Continued...
Heart – This famous muscle pumps blood around your dog’s body, carrying oxygen and nutrients to every cell! It has to work hard, especially when your dog is excited or has been running around.
Liver – The liver has a lot of jobs, like helping to clean the blood, store energy, and even aid digestion. It’s one of the biggest organs inside the body and performs hundreds of functions!
Stomach – This is where the food goes after your dog has eaten it. The stomach breaks the food down so the body can digest all the good stuff it needs.
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Intestines – After the stomach has broken down your dog’s dinner, it pushes it through the intestines. This long, stretchy tube helps to absorb the good nutrients it needs and send it to the bloodstream. (Which the heart pumps around, delivering the new intake of nutrients, which keeps the organs healthy! See? It all connects!)
Cruciate Ligament – A tiny but mighty piece of tissue inside the knee joint. It helps keep the knee stable, but if it gets torn, your dog might limp and even need surgery to repair it.
Humerus – This is the big bone in the front leg, between the shoulder and the elbow. It helps with running, digging, and chasing tennis balls!
Femur – This is the strong back leg bone between the hip and knee. It helps to power all of that sprinting, jumping and climbing.
*Remember Biscuit? He had a broken bone that didn’t heal properly. Vets were able to tell something was wrong inside by how he was acting on the outside. Read his full story here.*
But wait! Here’s some fun anatomy facts all about your perfect pooch:
1. A dog’s nose talks to the brain, A LOT
Dogs have up to 300 million scent receptors in their noses (humans have about 5 million). Their olfactory bulb, the part of the brain that processes smells, is 40 times bigger than ours! That’s why they can sniff out everything from sausages to sadness.
2. Their stomachs have super acid
Dogs can handle bacteria that would make humans sick. Why? Their stomach acid is very strong, with a pH close to battery acid. It helps them digest raw meat, bones, and… well, some pretty gross stuff if they need to.
3. The intestines are LONGER than you think
If you stretched out a dog’s intestines, they’d be over 4 times as long as their body. Good thing it’s all squished up neatly inside.
4. Dogs have 319 bones (give or take)
The exact number can vary depending on the breed and whether the tail is long or short, but most dogs have more bones than humans because we only have 206!
5. They have three eyelids
Called the nictitating membrane, it helps protect and moisten their eyes. You might spot it when your dog is sleepy or just waking up.
That’s a wrap on "What’s Under the Fluff?"
Now that you know your femur from your humerus and your liver from your lungs, you’re already thinking like a young vet-in-training. The more you understand what’s inside a dog, the better you’ll be at spotting signs of illness, keeping pets healthy, and maybe even becoming a real vet one day.
Want more animal science, vet challenges, and weird-but-true facts?
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