Boy and Dog, Girl and Dog: A Relationship Built on Love

Found this article on breeding dogs over at Dogtime and it impressed me as worth sharing. I don't see the writer's name but the content is interesting, when you stop to think about the history of the bond between man and dog. Man, of course, is relative...it stands for "human"... not to exclude the girls.

The article talks about ancient dogs' first job as "acting as a combination of security and waste management." The barking being the security, one expects, and the willingness to eat whatever was leftover when the humans were done eating, is the waste management.

It's true that no one really knows how the dog was domesticated - maybe some children in a tribe adopted puppies and the bond between human and animal was born. Maybe dogs were helpful in hunting - by fetching birds or small mammals, something they would only do (I think) if they considered the hunter their leader. Maybe lots of things...

One thing is for certain, dogs are an important part of our lives today. Most pet parents love their dogs as much as anyone else in the family. Dogs are members of the family. They are alloted a place at the table (albeit, under someone's feet), and they are considered when it's time to think of where to go on vacation, or when it's time to visit the Dr. We go to our Dr, and we take them to the vet.

Author Meg Daley Olmert has written a book, Made for Each Other, on the human-animal bone, and she shows that having pets raises oxytocin when owners' pet their dogs. Oxytocin, by the way, is a hormone which "aids in forming and maintaining relationships"). I wrote about this on the Shine petblog, recently, and a lot of folks left wonderful stories.

Olmert talks about the non-verbal cues dogs and cats pick up from their owners, as if they can read our minds. She talks about how important pets are to us, as a human beings. I have to repeat her statement that, "We may exist because we think, but we live because we love." 

No pet parent I know will disagree with that. The wonderful folks who left comments over at Shine agreed wholeheartedly. Do you?