A nice thing about dogs is their openness -- there doesn't seem to be much mystery to their love of fun, food and us. But that doesn't mean we know everything about them. Here are a few tidbits about our four-legged friends we picked up over the last 12 months.

Back at the beginning of the year, we learned that dogs are sensitive to Earth's magnetism and prefer to take care of their important business while aligning themselves north/south. This explains, we also learned, why our pups tend to spin in circles before they poop. They're just calibrating their internal compasses.