The puppy is loyal and courageous, intelligent and adaptable. Useful also as affectionate, the dog guards people’s flocks, plays with their children, and helps them hunt. A loving pet, the dog is understood as a trusted companion.
Wherever citizenry live—whether in an Eskimo village, a jungle clearing, or a crowded city—dogs live, too. within the us alone, about 34 million dogs are kept as pets. Some are mongrels. Others are pedigreed—for through selective breeding people have created many distinct sorts of dogs. In North America alone, quite 120 standard breeds are recognized.
People admire puppies . But they typically fear the dog’s untamed relatives—the wolves, coyotes, jackals, foxes, and other species that structure the Canidae , or doglike mammals. There has always been open warfare between wild dogs and other people . As carnivores (meat eaters), wild dogs often compete with people for prey. Sometimes they attack domestic stock also . People could also be forced to kill wild dogs so as to guard themselves and their livestock.
It has been only recently that folks began to realize that dogs within the wild if kept in confined spaces contribute more good than inflict harm. they assist to regulate destructive rodents. And where game animals threaten to become too plentiful, wild dogs remove many who might otherwise starve to death. In short, they play a neighborhood in nature’s checks and balances.
Most scientists think that the wolf is that the principal ancestor of our puppy . But jackals, coyotes, and dingoes undoubtedly also contributed their blood to the puppy . for instance , many dogs of India are almost identical with jackals in appearance. and therefore the American Indians had dogs that seemed like coyotes.
How did people first tame these wild dogs? Thousands of years ago, primitive people lived in caves and hunted with clubs, spears, and other crude weapons. Wolves or other wild dogs often lived near them. Skulking about their campfires, these animals cleaned up the bones and scraps of meat people threw away. Sometimes primitive people killed the wild dogs once they tried to steal their meat. At other times they probably picked up roly-poly wolf or jackal puppies as playmates for his or her children.
These puppies grew up tame and affectionate. People gradually learned that they made good hunting companions also as pets. Then, much later, people found that that they might breed their best hunting dogs with their speediest dogs and obtain offspring with the simplest qualities of both parents. Through crossbreeding, different sorts of dogs began to develop. Ancient sculptures show us that the Assyrians had huge mastiff-like dogs that they used for lion-hunting in 600 BC. And long before then the Egyptians had dogs that seemed like greyhounds.
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