GENERAL CANINE HISTORY - Part 1/2 Articles | Dogs

By: Guy Starbuck

No absurdity exists in the notion that as far back as history goes, when man inhabited this planet, he made an ally and a friend of some kind of native representative of the contemporary canine, and that in gratitude for its help in keeping at bay wild animals, and in standing watch over his goats and sheep, he shared his food with it, let it sleep in a corner of his abode, and got to rely on it and be fond of it.

In all probability the animal was at first no more than a strangely docile jackal, or an ill wolf forced by its mates from the wild rampaging pack to look for sanctuary in a strange environment. One can really imagine the likelihood of the companionship commencing in conditions where primitive hunters carried some vulnerable little cubs home to be looked after and raised by the womenfolk and kids. Dogs brought into the house as playmates for the kids would grow to consider themselves, and be considered, as family members.

In almost all regions of the globe, evidence of a native dog family are discovered apart from the Madagascar, West Indian Islands, New Zealand, Polynesian Islands, and the islands to the east of the great Malayan Archipelago, where no indication is present that any dog, fox, or wolf has lived as a proper native animal. In the primeval Oriental lands, and usually among the primitive Mongolians, for hundreds of years together the dog continued to be wild and vicious and uncared for, skulking in packs, wolf-like and scrawny, as it lurks, in the present day, through the alleyways and below the walls of each Eastern city. No overtures were made to draw it into human company or to tame it down. It is till we arrive to study the documents pertaining to the more developed civilizations of Egypt and Assyria that we come across any noticeable types of canine form.

In Palestine, the dog wasn’t respected very much, and in the Old as well as the New Testaments, it generally is referred to with disdain and derision as an "impure beast." The Book of Job contains the well-known allusion to the Sheepdog "But now they that are younger than I have me in derision, whose fathers I would have disdained to set with the dogs of my flock" and it too has a hint of scorn, and it is noteworthy that the lone biblical reference to the dog being an acknowledged companion of man happens in the mythical Book of Tobit (verse. 16), "So they went forth both, and the young man's dog with them."

Well, the vast numbers of various dog breeds and the huge dissimilarities in their points, size, and overall appearance are facts that make it hard to think that all of them share a common descent. One reflects on the dissimilarities between the Japanese Spaniel and the Mastiff, the Tiny Black & Tan Terrier and the St. Bernard, the elegant Pomeranian and the Deerhound, and is at a loss in pondering over the likelihood of their having come down from a common ancestor. Even then the difference is not as enormous as that between the Shetland pony and the Shire horse, the Kerry cattle and the Shorthorn, or the Pygmy and the Patagonian; and all breeders of dogs are aware of how simple it is to create an assortment in size and type by calculated selection.