Dalmatians are named after the region they’re from—Dalmatia, an area in Croatia along the Adriatic Sea. Puppies are completely white when they’re born. They develop their own unique pattern of dark brown or black spots within a few weeks. Eye color may be brown, blue, or a combination thereof. Ten percent of Dalmatians are born deaf, but that doesn’t stop them from doing their jobs: for thousands of years Dalmatians worked as carriage dogs—they walked alongside horse-drawn chariots and then carriages, encouraging the horses to move forward. Before the motorized car was invented, fire trucks were actually just horse-drawn vehicles, and the Dalmatian urged the horses to run as fast as they could to the blazing fires. Nowadays, they’re just along for the ride.