Plain observation on my dog I like to hear on other dogs

Not exactly.

Remember that dogs reach reproductive age in less than a year. So in the 12,000 years since the first lazy wolves decided to give up chasing antelopes and take up the easy life of eating the mountains of perfectly tasty food that humans leave on the ground around our villages, they've gone through fifteen thousand generations of human-directed selective breeding. They are now a distinct subspecies of wolf, Canis lupus familiaris. They have smaller brains to survive on the lower-protein diet of a scavenger and their teeth are better shaped for chewing carrots than ripping apart a wildebeest, but the most phenomenal change is in their instincts.

It is they who have adapted to the relationship, not us. They have become more gregarious: no wolf pack has more than a dozen members, whereas dogs hang out in gigantic packs that even include other species like horses, cats, monkeys, parrots and humans. They've learned to read our facial expressions, adapted to our schedules, even understand a few of our words.

In addition, they exhibit neoteny. Watch some wildlife documentaries about wolves and you'll see their puppies barking, chasing sticks, and roughhousing. But the adults never do that. Dogs never stop! They retain their puppy behaviors until their dying day.

So yeah, they know exactly what to do to make us go, "Aww, look at the cute doggie!"

The best deal we've ever gotten from twelve thousand years of evolution.

Cats exhibit neoteny, but only in domestication. We pick them up and carry them around, we feed them, we cuddle them: We act like we're momma cats and they're our kittens. This reanimates their kitten instincts. They even socialize with other cats, something that adult cats don't do in the wild. They might tolerate each other if they've found an easy life near human habitation eating rodents and having little treats tossed at them, so there's no competition for prey, but they're not exactly friends.

A little of that, and some behaviors they have developed experimentally that work.

Since we're a pack-social species and our children require parenting for almost two decades (much longer than even whales and elephants), we all have the instinct to be kind and nurturing to children, even if they're not our own. Our species could not survive if we weren't like this.

So all another species of animal has to do is learn how to mimic human children, and suddenly he's got a pillow and a dish of food.

 

César is a relatively common man's name in Spanish-speaking countries. It's simply the old Roman imperial title Caesar.

And it's not exactly unknown in anglophone countries. Caesar Rodney signed the Declaration of Independence and Caesar Romero was a well-known movie and TV actor in my day.

 

That's your problem right there. Free-feeding may work for outdoor dogs, but it's a disaster with indoor dogs. The dog needs to be able to go out for a dump within an hour after eating, because his intestine is so short that there's no storage room for extra feces.

Even if he's an older dog who might settle down and go to sleep, if he's not deaf something is bound to awaken him during the day and get him moving. The activity will stimulate his organs and he'll have to go.

Feed him once in the morning and once in the evening. That way you control his schedule.

In order to avoid this problem most people feed smaller dogs only once a day, and many even do this with large dogs. But in a large dog this has the risk of dilatation and volvulus, or "stomach torsion," which requires immediate medical attention or it can be fatal. Of course the risk is small: In the wild, wolves may eat only once a day or even once in two days, and the species has survived very well. It comes down to risk management: a choice between a small health risk versus a large housekeeping risk (cleaning up messes several times per week).

Looks very similar to Bo, the famous Portuguese water dog in the White House.

Do you think Julius Caesar ever fetched sticks???

Over the decades we have learned to be very careful in choosing a name for a new pet. We named one bird Amelia Earhart and another Icarus, and they were both lost in flight.

We named a dog Batmanuel (after the character in the quickly-canceled live-action TV show "The Tick"), and he actually swoops. We breed Lhasa Apsos and this 20-lb stud once jumped all the way up onto the kitchen counter, and then up into the windowsill, then seven feet down to the patio, in order to have access to a bitch in heat.

We named another dog Valentine and she was the sweetest dog who ever lived.

 

Most baby mammals are born with brains large enough to perform many of the tasks they'll need as adults. But the human brain is 3-4 times as large (in proportion to our bodies) as our closest cousins, the chimpanzees and gorillas. That's an awfully big head to squeeze out through the birth canal. Especially since our bipedal walking style places a limit on the width of our pelvis--imagine the immense rocking motion if your feet were two or three times farther apart than they are.

So our babies' brains are tiny. They're arguably the most helpless of all newborn mammals. So they can't do much of anything.

 

What I meant was:

In order for newborn humans to have brains as well-developed as newborn giraffes, their heads would have to be twice as large as they are. This would require the birth canal to be twice as big as it is. This would require the pelvis to be wider. Wider hips mean the thighs would be farther apart: a wider stance.

Walking bipedally causes a complete transfer of our body weight from one leg to the other with every step: a tremendous rocking motion with constantly-reversing inertia. If our legs were even farther apart than they are, the muscles in our thighs, hips and buttocks would have to be much larger, stronger and heavier than they are already.

Our gait would be ponderous. Our torso would sway visibly from side to side. It might be impossible to run. Not to mention climbing stairs!

Oh... and for a baby's brain to grow larger before birth, the gestation period would have to be longer. Imagine a fifteen-month pregnancy instead of nine!

And imagine your vertical-standing, bipedal-walking wife carrying that gigantic fetus around!