"At times, dogs appear to move and react like wild animals" "Yet they are, by definition, domesticated" "In perhaps only fourteen thousand years humans have modified and manipulated a single species to create more than four hundred breeds" "But for all their variety of appearance all dogs are simply mutations of their closest ancestral relative..." "the wolf" "DOGS" "Wolves are opportunistic pack hunters always alert to the possibility of an easy meal" "Was this the catalyst for their domestication?" "Over thousands of years wolves had competed for prey with another group of hunters complex communicators not unlike themselves" "Perhaps the wolves were drawn in by the smell of meat cooking over a fire... and into contact with their human rivals" "Eventually, some wolves may have stayed simply to scrounge scraps the humans allowing these less-aggressive and more curious animals to remain nearby and to breed" ""Go away!"" "And so by lucky chance began the relationship that would transform the wolf" "This is the starting point for obtaining the DNA to do the genetics research" "Evolutionary geneticist Doctor Rodney Honeycutt is trying to figure out precisely how the accident of domestication occurred" ""...and see it come out of solution."" "His analysis may even reveal where wolves were first domesticated and when" ""...genetics research."" ""Domestication is a very rare event, really" "It not something that humans in their great wisdom can can do multiple times" "It obviously was something that occurred not many times and it might have been blind stupid luck that allowed us to domesticate a particular species to begin with."" "But how quickly could wolves have been domesticated" "It was once thought to have taken hundreds even thousands of years" "In Siberia, an experiment gone wrong has changed that view" "Over thirty years ago the Russian fur industry try to breed silver foxes that were tame and easy to handle" "Tameness in wild animals is usually a juvenile trait" "So foxes were found that had retained their tameness into adulthood" "It took less than twenty-five years to achieve adult tameness that could be reliably reproduced from one generation to the next" "But in domesticating the silver fox the fur industry got more than they bargained for" "The domestic foxes inherited not only the juvenile tameness but often their physical characteristics" "For instance, white markings began showing up on the fox's heads and chests" "Some developed permanently floppy ears and tail lengths became unpredictable some short, some long, some curled like a Husky" "Here is a very interesting animal as a result of domestication" "In the extreme, the foxes became remarkably unfox-like" "This animal has one half blue eye... white side of the body and a very interesting shape of the tail" "This made them useless to the fur industry" "But it did illustrate how quickly the wolf could have been tamed and then physically modified" "Although it's easy to see the wild wolf beneath the skin domestic dogs have been bred into malleable creatures" "But with four hundred different breeds what are some of the dog's basic characteristics?" "Many dogs in the Third World appear to share the same physical features" ""Well, in my mind the Third World dog and ah, Lizzie here is a classic example about thirty-five pounds of perfectly proportioned canine intelligence ah, the Third World dog is a natural dog" "Ah, she has not been subjected to, ah ss... selective breeding by human beings" "She's not been shaped to conform to some particular human ideal of perfection or utility" "She has been shaped by the forces of nature."" "These fine-boned and thin-coated dogs of the South American rain forest look like dogs throughout the Tropics" "On the remote Mongolian steppes another natural dog shares life with nomadic people" "These northern dogs are larger bigger boned and have thicker coats for a colder climate" "They must be sturdy enough even as puppies to travel long distances" "Nomadic people may move every few weeks to find better grazing for their livestock" "The dogs are expected to keep up, or they will be left behind" "These people value their dogs highly feeding them the same rich goat milk that they drink" "Some Mongolian dogs have been selectively bred" "One such breed has tan markings over the eyes that gave rise to their name" "The Mongolian four-eyed dog is a wonderful example of how we can creatively reassemble canine genes to have an incredible effect" "Because a direct stare in a wolf of two eyes is threatening" "But to turn it into four eyes is even more intimidating" "The Mongolians prize their four-eyed dog so much that they even provide veterinary care a costly practice for people in less-developed countries" "We use dogs for protecting livestock and hunting" "People have dogs instead of a good fried" "In the West, dogs are still used in traditional ways to solve a familiar problem" "In the Colorado hills a herding breed of dogs from Italy known as Maremmas guard a flock of cashmers goats against one of the dog relatives, a coyote" "Raised among goats the Maremmas identify with the flock and become their pack leaders protecting the goats from predators" "Because the Maremmas keep the goats safe farmers can leave the coyotes alone" "The coyotes will need to find other sources of food" "In the winter, coyotes scavenge wherever they can even stealing fish from the mouths of otters" "Coyotes are symbols of the American wilderness and yet have had to adapt their scavenging skills to man-made environments" "Today, thousands of coyotes live within the greater Los Angeles area" "The wolves have not been so adaptable" "They were once the most widely distributed land mammal after humans" "But perceived by us as a threat some have been driven to the edge of extinction" "Still, these tenacious predators survived thanks in part to their ability to operate in packs" "They live and hunt in well-organized teams each member knowing its place" "Subordinate members must wait until the pack leaders have eaten" "Ritualized play-fighting reinforces the hierarchy" "Domestic dogs don't appear to have an intricate social structure like that of wolves" "And yet dogs and wolves are probably a single species" "Compare their genes and the elegant Borzoi of Russia and the minute Mexican Chihuahua are virtually identical" "The Chow Chow of China is indistinguishable from Australia's silky terrier..." "ndistinguishable, too, from the wolf" "The New Guinea singing dog is one of only a few breeds... that differ genetically from the others" "And they are behaviorally unique as well" "True to their name, they do not bark They sing" ""I think that the reason you see some of these particular dog breeds being very diversion is has to do more with isolation than anything else" "And so you you don't have any pollution of the gene pool in these populations so they, they maintain their uniqueness relative to say, some other breeds" "But even with these differences" "Rodney Honeycutt now believes that calling the domestic dog a separate species" "Canis familiaris, should be called into question" ""Canis familiaris probably doesn't exist as a, as a species" "As far as I'm concerned, based upon our genetic analysis and from a phylogenetic standpoint it's probably no more than a race within Canis lupus, the wolf" "and there's no good evidence based upon really any definition of the species to suggest that the domestic dog really deserves a species status."" "Where did the domestic dog come from?" "We know that it is cousin to the... approximately thirty-five living members of the so-called canid family... which includes wolves, coyotes, jackals and foxes" "The roots of the canid family stretch back thirty-five million years to small now-extinct mammals living in vast primeval forests" "Fossil evidence suggests how the canid line evolved" "lts oldest ancestor was a tree-dweller known as hesperacyon or dawn dog" "Short-legged and long-bodied it differed only slightly from the ancestors of the cat" "Dawn dogs' descendants evolved into the canid family as we know it today" "Two branches survived the lupine branch which includes the wolves and dogs... and the vulpine branch, the foxes" "The gray fox... evolved at least six million years ago and retained the ability to climb trees" "This means that it can even hunt for birds' eggs" "In fact, the success of all canids depends on a varied diet" "Dogs are members of the mammalian order carnivora, the meat-eaters" ""Here you go, Tide." "You hungry?"" "But they've developed the ability to eat and digest vegetables as well as meat much like humans" "They can do this partly because of a modification of their teeth" "A characteristic of carnivore dentition is a set of molars with sharp cutting edge, the carnassials" "The canid carnassials have a grinding surface behind the cutting edge to allow vegetables and fruit to be chewed effectively" "This sort of dietary adaptability opened the way for the canids to colonize the world" "from the frozen Arctic to the furnace of the Sahara" "The fact that the fennec, smallest of the foxes can make its home here, is proof of the canid wide-reaching adaptability" "A golf course in urban Colorado home to a thriving population of red foxes" "Unlike wolves, foxes do not live and hunt in packs" "But they can have surprisingly complex family lives" "Here, squirrels are favorite prey" "This male has made a kill and keeps rival foxes at bay" "He even appears... to rebuff his own mate" "But out of view of other foxes, he passes her the carcass" "She takes the prey home to their four growing kits" "At the den the dead squirrel is snatched by the most dominant, or alpha kit" "Without intervention the alpha would prevent his siblings from feeding" "He even resists his mother's attempts to claim back the carcass" "After a while she finally succeeds in taking the squirrel from the alpha kit and gives it to a waiting sibling" "Later, she takes the squirrel from the second kit and gives it to the most submissive kits" "This is the first time that this feeding hierarchy among foxes has been filmed and it raises many questions" "Does the mother do this to ensure the survival of her weakest kits or is it a way to communicate hunting techniques to her young?" "Vocal communication is common on pack-forming canids" "In India, a wild dog known as the dhole communicates using a repertoire of shrill whistles" "They live in dense vegetation and whistling enables them to hunt cooperatively even when they can't see each other" "On the plains of southern Africa the most endangered of all canid species also hunts cooperatively" "The African hunting dogs work as a pack to bring down large powerful prey, like a wildebeest" "This one kill could feed the whole pack" "The pups wait back at the den" "Often the dogs hunt a long way from the den so the adults carry the food back in their stomachs" "It's an effective means of transportation" "When they return, they regurgitate the meat to feed their young" "The entire group, from the alphas to the most subordinate members of the pack work together to care for the pups" "From the time they are a few weeks old a domestic puppy's development which should be directed by the pack is taken over by a human" "We assume the alpha role" "We have also assumed the role of selecting for specific physical characteristics" "Indeed, most dog breeds arose in just the past one hundred years or so" ""To me, the most intriguing thing about all this is the fact that you can take wild canids and if you look at a wild species of wolf, coyote or jackal they, they look very similar." "But under, under the surface there's this incredible wealth of genetic variation that allows for this animal to be manipulated through breeding to uncover this this incredible diversity that we call the domestic dog."" "Humans have taken that underlying diversity and created giants like the Great Dane" "and dwarfs like the Chihuahua" ""Okay." "Come on, Sugar."" "And while some varieties appear to be the result of a bizarre aesthetic others reflect a practical origin" ""Lot of competition there."" "This grooming may look frivolous but some say it was originally conceived in the Middle Ages to help make the standard poodle fast and buoyant while swimming and to keep the vital organs when they pulled ducks from cold waters" "Tenacious cairns once hunted English foxes and rats" "The Basset's long ears helped them to track prey in Renaissance France" "A few breeds have been around since antiquity" "Irish wolfhounds, Ibizan hounds and afghans were bred to chase prey from wolves to rabbits" "After a sixty-day gestation period... an Irish terrier gives birth to four healthy pups" ""Yeah, mom'll loosen up in a bit." "Easy, Sweetie" "Easy." "Ah, ha." "Says that was a nice nine-week nap" "Ha, ha." "That's a good girl."" "The newborn terriers closely resemble newborn Corgis which look remarkably like newborn greyhounds and newborn shelties" "Except for differences in color, all puppies look almost identical" "They have sausage-shaped bodies, closed eyes and closed, pointed ears" "But the similarity doesn't last for long" "Within a few short weeks, the genes that control how a dog grows begin switching on and off... changing an anonymous newborn into the distinctive streamlined shape of an adult greyhound" "And yet the same genes that make the greyhound sleek and leggy work completely differently to create the short-legged, heavy-bodied Corgi" "Take some basic wolf genes and it seems anything is possible" "With our ability to manipulate the dog physical appearance came our success at exploiting some of their most acute sensory skills" "This beagle uses his finely-tuned senses of smell and hearing to prevent structural damage to houses" ""Let's go." "Let's go." "Let's go." "Good dog!" "Let's go." "Good boy." "Let's go."" "These canine pest controllers can locate concealed termites from as far away as sixteen feet" ""Good boy." "Seek them out." "Show me" "Seek them out." "You go seek" "You go show me." "Good dog." "Seek."" "While human inspectors, unaided can find infestations only twenty percent of the time dogs are close to one hundred percent successful" ""You go show me."" ""Show me." "Seek them out" "You go seek." "You go show me."" "Precisely locating the termites allows for spot treatment and saves time money and environmental damage" ""Good boy!" "Good dog!" "All right!" "Good boy!" "Good dog."" "A dog's sense of smell can even be used to assist in the successful breeding of cows" "For cows to produce milk economically they need to breed annually" "But cows are only fertile for twelve hours per month" "Experienced cattle managers can identify fertile cows about half the time" "But taught to sniff-out signals of fertility and alert its human handler this Australian shepherd is ninety percent accurate a canine skill that could save the dairy industry three hundred million dollars a year" ""Good girl." "That's a girl" "Good girl." "Good job." "Okay."" "Though we are expert at exploiting a dog's sense of smell we're only now learning how it works" "Beau sees with his nose" "He follows an invisible trail through the forest sniffing for odor-laden particles in the air on the ground, or in the trees" "Mucous carries the scent into the nasal cavity and over a delicate structure of curving bones" "Forty-four times more receptor cells than in a human nose record and send information to the olfactory bulb in the dog's brain" "Here the odors are identified and the dog sees the scent of a deer that passed this way a week ago or the resting place of a long-dead bird or the unfamiliar smell of another dog" "A powerful sense of smell and a hunter's instinct are effective weapons in the war against drugs" ""Your bag!" "Look, your bag."" ""Wait." "Go on now." "Good boy."" ""We're, ah, teaching this dog a new odor" "We're doing some field exercises what we call a controlled retrieve" "Ah, I'm just, I've got a scented towel" "I'll throw it." "The dog, it'll be on sight the first few exercises" "Ah, once he carried it around and adjusted he says I know that odor then we can start to hide it in some areas where he has to look for it" "But right now, it's just a sight."" ""What's on the towel?"" ""Ah, this is, ah, pseudo cocaine" "That's what we're using right there in this little cloth bag" "The dog can get to it" "We're never had one yet to, it's, you would think ah, they could get to it" "But, ah, ah, we're never had one break into that one yet" "And it's, ah, like I said, it's only pseudo" "We wouldn't, we couldn't tie the real stuff on here" ""High-energy stuff, huh?"" ""You bet." "This is what we want him looking for" "We're ready!" "Ready?" "You ready, Chris?" "Huh?" "You ready, buddy?" "What is that?"" ""What an intense look on that dog."" ""That a boy." "Get after that." "There you go!"" ""Get it."" ""Is this, is this, hey, Tony." "Is this the same Chris?"" ""Oh, he is definitely."" ""He's, ah, he is Chris in a wolf's coat."" "Drug enforcement officers often recruit dogs from pounds and shelters across the US" ""What's that, Chris?"" "The high energy Chris needs to become a drug dog ay have been the very characteristic that caused him to be abandoned in the first place" ""Throw it back to me." "Oh!" "Get him on the other towel, on the other towel" "Yeah!" "All right. "" ""Good dog!"" ""Get him up there." "Good, prep and move."" "In the next stage of training, drugs are hidden in cars" ""That's it." "Let him have that leash" "Let him have that leash"" ""Get out of the way!"" ""Watch your leash." "It's tangled around his neck."" "Only a few dogs succeed at these increasingly difficult tasks" ""Take it, Charlie." "Oh!" "Let's go" "Let's go!" "Come on." "Let's get" ""Come on."" ""Then get some in here" "Get some good aggression."" ""How many dogs make it?" "Only one out of forty-five dogs that enter into the training course graduate" "That's a very low percentage, very, very, very low" "The reason for that is it a very hard job" "In order for the dog to detect this cocaine or heroine the dog must be within six inches searching the vehicle searching the suitcase or searching the box."" "In the final stages, the dog's work is made even more complex" "It must learn to walk on a moving conveyor belt while searching for drugs."" ""You got to just tap those seams if his head comes up a little bit."" ""Find it." "Fetch." "Find it" "Good boy." "All right!" "Whoo!"" ""Whoo!" "Got two." "Come on" "Get excited with him!"" ""Whoo!" "All right!"" ""Listen." "Let him tear it up" "Let him shred it."" ""Yeah." "All right!" "All right." "Yeah!"" ""Pull that box!" "Come on!"" ""That a boy."" ""Got to hold it down" "Got to hold the box down when you pull it."" "A dog that might tear up the family couch and dig crater-sized holes in the back yard makes an ideal pupil for drug dog training school" ""Okay."" "In 1996 alone, four hundred fifty dog and customs officer teams found drugs valued at two billion dollars" ""That a boy!"" "In this search, the team homed in on a seat with drug odors" "The passenger sitting in that seat was identified and questioned" ""That's my buddy." "Okay." "Up around here" "Okay, up around here" "You have to get on top." "That's a boy"" ""Want to do it?"" ""Good girl." "Good girl." "Seek." "Seek." "Seek"" "Over the remains of a burned-out house" "Villain and her partner Bill search for signs of arson" ""Show me."" "Villain can detect minute traces of flammable liquid down to one five hundred thousandth of a drop" ""Come on." "Seek." "Seek."" "Without this help, chemists would have to analyze all of the remains instead of just those areas pinpointed by the dogs" ""Seek." "Seek." "Come on." "Seek." "Seek." "Seek." "Seek."" "And using canine detectives like Villain can have added benefits" ""She has got sixty-three suspect arrests where she's actually picked out the bad guy in the crowd" "Ah, one particular bad guy actually asked to pet her and she sniffed his hands and let me know that he had petroleum on him" "And we used that as, ah, evidence to help convict him."" "At the Oklahoma city bomb site it wasn't the task of dogs to find the criminals but to locate victims buried in the debris" ""There's a portion that we can get to and there are about another ah, they are estimating sixty-five or seventy in  underneath that that we're trying to get to"" ""This is very stressful for not only the search workers themselves but it's very stressful for the dogs" "They understand death, or at least..." "we think they do" "Ah, they find this, ah, just as disturbing as the rest of us" "If all you find throughout the course of the day are the deceased of a disaster at the end of the day we will make a concerted effort to set up a mock search where the dog is assured of finding a live person" "Typically it's another co-worker, a co-searcher just so we can finish the day on an upbeat note."" "These dogs specialize in finding missing persons" ""An air-scenting dog like Duchess is capable of going out and and smelling what we believe are dead cells that are coming off the skin of the body for both live and dead people" "So days, weeks, even sometimes years after a person has gone missing these dogs are very valuable resources in identifying exactly where an individual was last seen."" ""What you got there?" "Oh, good girl, Duchess" "Come here." "Come here."" ""Canine twenty-one to Fairfax"" ""Fairfax command." "Go ahead."" ""Be advised we found a jacket, a black jacket that meets the description of the profile on the subject."" ""Good girl."" ""Fairfax copies that information"" ""Good girl." "Good girl."" "Teaching Duchess to find lost humans began with hiding a favorite toy" "Gradually, she was taught to associate finding human cells with a reward of playing frisbee" "After a grueling search, her payoff remains the same" ""Good girl." "Bring it here, Duchess."" ""A dog's drive to use its powerful sense of smell comes not from human training... but from a basic biological need" "Scent marking enables a dog to send and receive important information about physical status" "The dogs following learn the sender's sex age and breeding receptiveness" "They may even be able to read information about the physica and emotional health of other dogs" "Can this ability be used to detect the well-being of other species, like humans?"" ""Go!" "Up." "Up." "Up." "Good boy." "Up."" "The answer is provided by two dogs in Florida a golden retriever named Breeze and a standard schnauzer named George" "Both are obedience champions and have learned to perform exercises like scent discrimination finding and retrieving an article with their handler scent on it" ""Heel."" "But how finely can this discrimination be tuned?" ""Okay!" "Okay."" "Can a dog be taught to pick out the smell of disease from all the other hospital odors like tape gauze, disinfectant and gloves" ""Good girl." "Good" "And can it even distinguish between say cancers and other types of human disease?" "All cancer is being detected presently through visualization methods" "Now, whether it's a lung cancer which is through a chest X-ray or, ah computer enhancements or microscopes or biopsies" "They've also a visualization analysis of what's inside a lesion" "This is the first time that that an attempt has been made to deviate from that normal medical practice and make it through canine olfactory."" "At Tallahassee Memorial Hospital" "Breeze and George are learning to sniff out malignant melanoma or skin cancer" "The dogs have proven in tests like this that they can detect malignant melanoma with near-total accuracy" "But how do they do this?" ""I have no idea what the dog is smelling" "And that is the fundamental, ah question I think that this observation raises" "Ah, I believe the dog can smell the cancer" "I believe the dog can differentiate that smell from, ah, normal tissue" "But exactly what the dogs are smelling ah, is, it's, it's entirely, ah, unknown" "It could be that it's a, ah one of, ah, volatile chemical that comes off the tumor" "Ah, that, that chemical may be very specific for a cancer."" "To make such precise discriminations dogs have an olfactory bulb in their brain that is four times larger than that found in humans" "And even though the human brain is ten times larger than that of a dog... the canine sense of smell is at least one hundred times more powerful" "At the moment, Breeze and George are probably unique" "But there's no reason other dogs can be trained in similar skills" "Dog training can begin young" "Equipped with their powerful senses dogs are initially flooded with information" "They see the world differently from us" "Because their ancestors evolved to hunt at twilight dog's eyesight is sensitive to low light conditions" "Unfamiliar aromas bombard their hypersensitive nasal passages" "And with their sensitivity to high and low-frequency sound the noise ricocheting off the walls is magnified" "On top of all this, and despite the presence of many other dogs allegiance to an alpha leader has to be diverted to a human" ""Down."" "Successful training is learning to shut out all these distractions" "Dog's hearing is not only amplified compared with that of humans but it is four times more sensitive to variations in pitch" "Therefore what sounds beautiful to us, may seem very different to a dog" "The ability to perceive such subtle variations in pitch enables dogs to discriminate between sounds that seem the same to us" "Two identical cars approach" "The first is ignored" "But before it is even seen the second is greeted with enthusiasm" "To the dogs, the two car engines are as different as an unknown opera is from a well-known tune" ""Hi." "How are you?" "Come here." "Oh, yeah." "Um, yes."" "Some owners claim that their dogs always know when they are returning home, even when they're out of hearing range" "Pam Smart leaves her home in England at the start of a simple scientific experiment designed to test whether dogs may have some as yet unknown sensory abilities" "As a video camera records, JC settles into a favorite spot" "Pam's parents have no idea when she will return, nor does Pam who is accompanied by an outside observer" "Meanwhile, JC rests peacefully at home" ""Are you free?"" ""Yeah." "Yeah."" ""All right." "Thanks." "Get in on that side?"" ""Yeah." "Get in the other side."" "The observer instructs Pam to return home at a randomly-determined time" "Within thirty seconds of her active decision to head for home" "JC wakes and goes to the window" ""I've tried everything to try and fool him" "Ah, but, ah, doesn't matter what I do, whether I go on foot on a cycle, in somebody else's car" "He knows when I'm coming home."" ""Thanks a lot" ""Bye now."" ""He's just standing in the window?"" ""Yeah.","Have a look."" ""Yeah." "Let's see."" ""Good boy"" "What clues told JC that his owner was returning?" "At the moment, only JC knows" "Domestication comes with a price" "Although DNA tests have shown that wild dogs like the New Guinea singing dog are generally free of hereditary diseases a number of domestic purebreds are not" ""Yeah." "I picked six off of each of these two filters ."" "A team of molecular biologists in Ann Arbor" "Michigan are detecting and profiling canine genetic disorders" "Using the tools of biotechnology they map canine genes in an attempt to locate and identify the sites of some of at least three hundred fifty genetic disorders that afflict many purebred dogs" ""Ah, purebreds were originally derived from a few founders and as a result of that the occasional recessive genes, ah, harmful genes disease genes that these dogs carry have been amplified and perpetuated in a particular breed" "So, what we see in a breed a particular pure breed, is a focusing and an amplification of particular diseases."" ""Up to a hundred breeds have significant problems with hip dysplasia."" ""A normal dog should have a nice, smooth well seated femoral head or hip ball in the joint with a nice, normal, parallel joint" "As hip dysplasia progresses we can see there's a tremendous amount of remodeling" "We're lost the normal cup." "We get back on the vessel."" ""We, ah, begin to lump in the other diseases" "It's not unlikely that, um, that upwards of twenty percent or so of dogs have a significant genetic disease."" ""I believe that the development of some of the purebreds has been a disservice, because it's, ah resulted in physical conformations that are really pretty unhealthy."" "So unhealthy that the Chinese crested can tolerate little direct sunlight" "Bulldogs have such huge heads that most pups are delivered by Cesarean section" "Their breathing is compromised by short muzzles with teeth jammed into a small mouth" ""Okay." "Number ten, please."" "Shar-Peis, dogs of China bred in the United States from just eight individuals are prone to agonizing skin disorders" ""This Rottie is a nice Rottie."" "With such intensive inbreeding genetic disorders among purebreds are passed on and magnified through successive generations" ""Okay." "This here looks real good" "No problems at all on this side."" "The diagnosis and treatment of genetic diseases makes up a significant portion of the billions of dollars spent every year on veterinarians" ""This food is, ah, all chicken and brown rice mix" "It's very, very digestible." "No chemical preservatives."" "Add to that, the billions we spend on dog food, supplies and toys" ""Come on, Muffy." "Let's go."" "Another side of this multi-billion dollar industry can be found in many neighborhood shopping malls" "Pet stores like this one sell puppies of virtually every shape and size" ""Puppy."" ""Yeah." "She knew what she was saying."" "Most of the animals come from puppy mills where hundreds of female dogs produce as many pups as possible" "The problem is that people who sell puppies for mass consumption know little about the genetic diseases they are proliferating and the people who buy them often do so on impulse" "Human societies estimate that between four and eight million dogs in the US end up in pounds and shelters each year" "Though most puppies are adopted sixty to seventy percent of the older dogs will be killed" "And the situation can be even worse elsewhere" ""Now in the Third World, ah dogs are the bottom of the barrel" "There are virtually no veterinary services" "They're often on borderline starvation and live off human excrement and garbage and leftovers."" "The paradox is that an animal domesticated by humans can be so easily discarded by them" "Long before we domesticated anything thousands of years before we tended flocks of sheep or herds of cattle" "before we harnessed the power of the horse" "and before we even thought about cultivating plants we roamed vast wildernesses with our dogs" "Over the centuries we're idealized them, trained them" "and even depended on them" "Yet they remain to some degree wild because just below the surface they are what they have always been" "THE END"