You don’t have to be intimately aware of the canine skeleton to appreciate our purebred dogs, but it helps to know how things work to spot a problem in a performance dog, detect discomfort in a dog that rarely leaves the yard, and evaluate structure in a show dog.

This nifty 3-D interactive site lets you rotate a dog skeleton and isolate its different parts. You can stop and start it, and using your mouse, pivot in any direction. All those times we’ve talked to you about pasterns, hocks, gait and toplines? It starts with “dem bones.”

It’s never too early to start learning, and if you know a child or preteen who’s into science, they may really enjoy the Tedco 4D Vision Dog Anatomy Model seen below. Those of us of a certain generation knew something like this as the “invisible dog.”

As for our thumbnail image,  it’s Jeff Koons’ famous Balloon Dog as an “invisible dog,” and you can buy one here.