GENERAL HISTORY OF DOGS

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In nearly all areas of the world traces of an native dog family are found, the only exceptions being the West Indian Islands, Madagascar, the eastern islands of the Malayan Archipelago, New Zealand, and the Polynesian Islands, in which there is no indication that any dog, wolf, or fox has existed as a real aboriginal creature. From the early lands that are ancient, and normally among the ancient Mongolians, the dog remained savage and neglected for centuries, prowling in packs, gaunt and wolf-like, as it prowls now through the streets and under the walls of every Eastern town. No attempt was made to allure it into human companionship or to improve it to docility. It is not till we come to examine the records of the greater civilisations of Assyria and Egypt that we discover any different varieties of puppy form.
Nor are their habits different. Although he's carnivorous, he'll also eat vegetables, and if sickly he'll nibble grass. From the pursuit, a pack of wolves will split into parties, one after the trail of their quarry, the other endeavouring to permeate its retreat, exercising a considerable amount of strategy, a characteristic which is exhibited by many of our sporting dogs and terriers when hunting in groups.
It has been implied that the one indisputable argument contrary to the lupine connection of this dog is the fact that all domestic dogs bark, although all wild Canidae state their feelings exclusively by howls. But the difficulty here isn't so good as it appears, since we know that jackals, wild dogs, and wolf pups reared by bitches readily acquire the habit. On the other hand, domestic dogs allowed to run wild forget how to bark, while there are some that have not yet learned to express themselves.
The great multitude of different strains of the dog along with the vast differences in their size, points, and general appearance are facts which make it difficult to believe they could have had a frequent ancestry. One thinks of the gap between the Mastiff and the Japanese Spaniel, the Deerhound and the fashionable Pomeranian, the St. Bernard and the Miniature Black and Tan Terrier, also is confused in considering the possibility of their having descended from a Frequent progenitor. Yet the disparity is no more than that between the Shire horse as well as the Shetland pony, the Shorthorn and the Kerry cows, or the Patagonian and the Pygmy; and all dog breeders understand how simple it is to produce a variety in size and type by analyzed selection.

The presence or absence of the habit of barking can't, then, be regarded as an argument in determining the question concerning the origin of the Dog Clothes. This stumbling block consequently disappears, leaving us at the position of agreeing with Darwin, whose closing hypothesis was that"it is highly probable that the domestic dogs of the world have descended from just two great species of wolf (C. lupus and C. latrans), and by two or another suspicious species of wolves specifically, the Indian, European, and North African kinds; from a minumum of one or two Southern American puppy species; from many races or species of jackal; and perhaps from one or more extinct species"; also that the blood of them, in some cases mingled together, flows in the veins of our domestic breeds.
The indigenous dogs of regions approximate carefully in size, coloration, form, and habit into the indigenous wolf of those areas. Of this most important circumstance there are far too many cases to allow of its being looked upon as a mere coincidence. Sir John Richardson, writing in 1829, observed that"the similarity between the North American wolves as well as the domestic dog of the Indians is so good that the strength and size of the wolf seems to be the only real difference.
In order to understand this issue it is necessary first to look at the identity of construction in the wolf and the dog. This identity of structure could best be analyzed in a comparison of the osseous system, or skeletons, of those two creatures, which so closely resemble each other their transposition would not readily be discovered.
The back of the dog consists of seven vertebrae in the neck, thirteen from the trunk, seven at the loins, three cervical vertebrae, and twenty five to twenty-two in the tail. In both the dog and the wolf you will find two pairs of ribs, nine true and four untrue. Every has forty-two teeth. They both have five front and four hind feet, while seemingly the common wolf has much the look of a large, bare-boned dog, that a favorite description of this one would function for the other.
An additional important point of similarity between the Canis lupus along with the Canis familiaris lies in how the period of gestation in both species is sixty-three days. There are from three to eight cubs at a wolf's litter, and all these are blind for twenty-one days. They are suckled for two weeks, but at the end of the time they're able to eat half-digested flesh disgorged for them with their dam or even their sire.
The dog wasn't greatly valued in Palestine, and in the Old and New Testaments it is commonly spoken of with scorn and contempt within an"unclean beast." Even the recognizable reference into the Sheepdog from the Book of Job"But they that are younger than I have me in derision, whose fathers I would have disdained to set with the dogs of my flock" isn't without a hint of contempt, and it is significant that the only biblical allusion to the dog as a recognized companion of man occurs in the apocryphal Book of Tobit (v. 16),"So they went forth both, and the young man's dog together."

There is no incongruity in the concept that at the first period of man's habitation of the world he made a friend and companion of some type of aboriginal representative of our contemporary dog, and that in return for its aid in protecting him from wilder animals, and in safeguarding his goats and sheep, he gave it a share of his own meals, a corner in his house, and climbed to trust it and care for it. Probably the creature was originally little apart from an unusually gentle jackal, or a ailing wolf driven by its companions out of the wild marauding package to look for shelter in alien environments. One can well conceive the possibility of the partnership beginning from the circumstance of some helpless whelps being brought home by the hunters to be tended and reared from the women and kids. Dogs introduced to the house as playthings for the kids would grow to regard themselves, and be considered, as members of the family