Even though you may love your puppy or dog more than you ever thought possible and think of him as your child, it's important to remember that a dog is not a person. Their genetic makeup dictates that they respond to things differently — after all, you wouldn't get to know your neighbors by sniffing around their toilets. But for a dog, the scents that are released from other dogs are key communicators about how they interact. This is just one example of how dogs are very different from us. What's wonderful is that we have learned to live together as two different species sharing the same world. That's because dogs are responsive to our signals, and we can train them to behave in ways that are acceptable to us.