Five little puppies dug a hole under the fence and went for a walk in the wide, wide world.
The Poky Little Puppy, Janette Lowrey
My family is going to get a new puppy soon – a wiggly bundle of Goldendoodle fuzz that will turn our home into joyous chaos for years to come. Before our pooch can join our family, however, it has to be born. Where does a puppy come from? Is it the same as goldfish or parakeets? The same as people?
Dogs, like all mammals, are born from their mothers. (If you happen to be one of those crazy cat people, you can be sure that kittens are born and grow in much the same way.) Their lives begin even before that, inside their mothers’ wombs – a special home for mammal babies in the mothers’ tummies. The mother dog (for out puppy, a sweet, gentle golden retriever) has eggs inside her body (not like chicken eggs – these don’t have any shell and are much smaller). After she and the father dog (a fluffy poodle) mate, the sperm and the egg join up to make the tiniest beginnings of our dog. At this point, it is just a single cell known as a zygote, but the DNA is already unique from every other dog that ever has or ever will live – our puppy is a one-time gift from the Creator to the world.
As our dog continues to grow, its single cell will divide and then divide again, over and over, getting more and more types of cells. It will become an embryo and then a fetus. Starting out looking more like a tadpole than a dog, our puppy will grow legs, a tail, floppy ears, and finally some wavy fur over its two-month stay inside its mother. All this time, the little puppy will be fed through an umbilical cord – a special tube that connects the mother dog to each of her puppies. Finally, my puppy and her littermates will enter the world, with closed eyes and a dependence on her mother’s milk, completely helpless and requiring the care of their mother.
Our newborn puppy will continue to grow and develop for another two months before she will get to come home with us (at only seven weeks, her brain has developed enough that you can see her adult personality). By this point, the puppies have gone from barely being able to army crawl to romping happily through the grass. Even after our puppy comes home (what should we name her?), she will continue to grow for about another year, going through adolescence before becoming a fully grown adult dog. At this point, our puppy (well, not a puppy any more!) could have a litter of her own, although most families choose to spay or neuter their dogs so that they cannot mate. Once our dog has been with us for 6-10 years, she will become a senior dog – one that is getting older and nearing the end of its life (although many dogs can live to be 14 years or older depending on their breed).
While our dog’s life cycle is quite different from a pet parakeet’s, it is similar to other mammals (except those weird ones that lay eggs – I’m looking at you platypus). A human, for example, grows in his mother’s womb just like a puppy, but typically stays for nine months before being born (while this is over four times as long as dogs, this is not even close to the longest among mammals – elephants grow for two whole years inside of their mothers before they are born!).
Once a newborn baby enters the world, it is even more dependent on its parents than the puppy was. Even after two months (when the puppy was ready to leave its mother), a infant cannot even move around on its own. Over the next ten months, the baby will start to eat solid food, crawl (or maybe even walk), and will likely say a couple of words. The child is now a toddler, ready to spend the next two years exploring their world and getting into trouble. By the young one’s fourth birthday (and entry into childhood), he can walk, talk, run, dance, sing, and investigate the world around him.
During childhood, a boy will continue to grow and learn quickly. Around age 14 (younger for girls), he will enter adolescence – the teenage years. He will develop his adult body and shoot up like Jack’s beanstalk (and probably eat his mother out of house and home…maybe that’s why Jack’s mother was so poor). Once they are fully grown and developed, the young man enters adulthood – a time to contribute to the world and grow a family of his own. After many years of hard work, he will reach old age (God willing), often retiring from his work so that he can contribute to his family and community in new ways. During this stage in life, he might need more help from his children and grandchildren, just as he was once the helper. Mammals, especially humans, have the benefit of supporting each other throughout our lives, allowing us to be happy and successful in the world.