Linda Siegei, Age 8, Of Garden Grove, Calif., for her question:

What was the first dog like?

The dog can trace his family tree back for 40 million years. Since that time, dogs of marry shapes and sizes have been chasing around the world. Dogs were here millions of years before the human family came to live in the world. And long before they learned to read, the human family made friends with some members of the dog family.

A pekingese is very different from a great dane. But the first dog did not look like a dog at all. He lived about 40 million years ago when the horse was no bigger than a modern sheep and the rhinoceros was no bigger than a modern horse. The experts who found his fossil bones have named him the miacis.

The miaeis was a squirrelish little animal with a long body, a pointed nose and a very long, furry tail. He could run on his short, stubby legs, and he had claws to help him climb trees. He was the ancestor of several different doggie animals. Some grew large and heavy, some were small and thin.

Ten million years ago, there were dogs like bears, coyotes, wolves, foxes and Hyenas. There were dogs in almost eyery land, but as yet no human beings had arrived to tame them. One of those ancient dogs has been named the tomarctus, and the experts say that he was most likely the ancestor of all the tame dogs we have today.

The toanarctus was a sort of hound dog, somewhat like a wolf and somewhat like a wild dog. He was a meat eater with splendid teeth. He was a fast runner and a good keen swimmer. This doggie ancestor had sharp eyesight, a sense of sme11 and his ears were always a1ert. He wore a thick coat, and his long, long tail was covered with bushy hair.

Tomarctus and his relatives roamed the world for millions of years. He was here to welcome the first human beings. Our caveman ancestors adopted him maybe 20,000 years ago. He became tame and learned to help his human fiends to track and hunt gsme.

The oldest breed of dog is said to be the saluki. He was a graceful, greyhound type of dog with long, silky hair. He was trained to hunt in arabia more than 8000 years ago. And in arabic, the name saluki means the noble one. Later, the Greeks bred the sturdy mastiff dog for hunting lions. The romans trained shepherd dogs and also kept smaller dogs as pets.