by Holle Abee

Created on: June 04, 2008   Last Updated: August 10, 2010

Dogs have been man's best friends for thousands and thousands of years. Even Groucho Marx, the bespectacled, moustachioed comic acknowledged this in his quote, "Outside a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside a dog, it's too dark to read." Look at all the important tasks dogs do for us. They sniff out drugs, they lead the blind, they find and retrieve game, they alert the deaf to ringing phones and doorbells, they rescue drowning victims and those buried by avalanches, they help accost criminals.

Now they're even used to find termites and bedbugs! Maybe even more important than these high-profile canine jobs is the role millions of pooches play in households across the globe: serving as a member of the family. This job might be the toughest a dog can do. He's on duty 24-7, alerting the family of intruders, entertaining his human pack, protecting children, and comforting us when we're down. And he does all these things unquestioningly, even when he's mistreated.

So why does the average dog perform all these activities so willingly, with his heart and soul? Because he's genetically wired to do so. Dogs adopt their humans as their pack members. You've heard folks say their dog thinks he's human? Nope! Your dog thinks of you as another dog. And if you've trained him properly, he sees you as the alpha leader and looks to you for guidance and swears his allegiance to you. No other animal on earth has this kind of bond with man.

Dogs were the first animals domesticated. Our early ancestors befriended wolves and wild dogs eons ago, when the canines hung around the campfires, waiting for scraps and leftovers from a kill. These ancient humans quickly learned that the animals could provide help with hunts and protection from intruders, and in turn, the dogs learned that with man's ability for procuring game, he'd have a reliable source of food. It was a win-win situation for both parties.

Over the generations, man learned to harness the dogs' innate qualities. They went from huning aides to sentinels to beasts of burden. Eventually, they became important just for companionship. The dogs were painstakingly bred and crossbred until hundreds of different breeds were developed. It's amazing to think that a chihuahua and a great Dane are from the same family! Yep, rottweilers and beagles and yorkies all share a common ancestor - all developed to suit man's needs and satisfy his whims or his idea of canine beauty.

I've owned and trained a lot of dogs, representing many breeds.

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