Pet Supplies Plus

Digging Dog History
Anthropolist Mary Elizabeth Thurston On Our "15,000-Year Love Affair" With Canines

We love them, confide in them, and count on them for everything from companionship to protection. Warm and furry rocks of stability, dogs have been at our side since the Ice Age. Yet, despite their unwavering loyalty, our canine friends have been largely ignored in the history books. Over the centuries, few writers have bothered to record the role that dogs have played in human society.

Anthropologist Mary Elizabeth Thurston hopes to correct this oversight in her new book, The Lost History of the Canine Race, a Book-of-the-Month Club selection published by Andrews & McMeel. Drawing on a variety of little-known sources, Thurston has pieced together a remarkable story of the dog’s long relationship with people.

In this exclusive interview with Pet Supplies “Plus”, Thurston discussed her new book and the insights it offers into the minds and hearts of our loyal family pets.

Background -- “I was inspired to write this book by my dog Petey, an 8-year-old rescued mixed-breed. Like a lot of dog owners, I’m always looking for ways to better understand my pet, so I investigated the history of dogs. After doing this, I realized that so much of the dog’s history is lost. It’s ironic; dogs are such an important part of our everyday lives, but we know so little about their past.”

A Complex History -- “Aside from the incredible sense of loyalty that dogs have toward people, the thing that struck me most during my research into canine history is its complexity. Dogs have occupied a wider variety of roles in society than anyone but people. They’ve been everything from surrogate children and lap pets, to hard-working laborers and fierce warriors.

“When you look at these roles, you can’t help but respect the adaptability of dogs. I don't know if there’s any species that’s as flexible as the canine. Even physically, you can have a teacup Poodle on one hand and a Great Dane on the other, and they’re both dogs. Basically, dogs are a type of wolf that was taken out of the natural selection process by people, and kept in a juvenile state to fill different roles in society.”

A Changing Relationship -- “The relationship between people and dogs is one that’s been constantly changing. You can tell a lot about a society by looking at how people relate to dogs. I believe that early in our history, dogs served as sort of a clean-up crew that lived on edges of human settlements and scavenged the animal carcasses that people discarded. Cave art doesn’t show any dog or dog-like creatures helping man hunt, because canines didn’t fill this role yet -- they more or less stayed on the periphery of human settlements. You see this type of relationship between people and dingo dogs existing today in aboriginal societies of Australia.

“The big change in our relationship with dogs came when we developed agriculture. Then there was a clearly defined role for dogs to play in protecting crops and livestock, and since people had more resources, they were in a better position to take dogs into their homes. As human societies prospered, the more affluent people were able to keep dogs strictly as pets, without worrying about the animals serving a ‘practical purpose.’ This is when the first ‘lap dogs’ started to appear. Having a pet dog remained something largely for the wealthy until the industrial revolution, when middle class people were able to have a dog just for the sheer joy of it.”

Dog Breeds -- “The idea of breeds has become more important as society has become more complex and stratified. There have always been breeds, but our definition of them has become more rigid. In the 1700s, there was more flexibility about what constituted a breed. For example, a mastiff was a big dog with a short snout, a spaniel was a generic type of hunting dog and so forth. But after the Victorian Era, breed definitions started to become very restrictive.”

Grooming -- “People are much more involved in the care of their pets today, but dog grooming is not new. The Romans used to clip the manes of their long-haired dogs, so they’d look like lions. Over a century ago in Paris, people would take their dogs to the River Seine to wash them and have them clipped by one of the itinerant groomers that set up shop along the river every Sunday.”

Low Point -- “In the western world, the low point in the dog’s history probably occurred during the Black Plague. People and many different animals were killed by the plague, but dogs were immune to it. So you had packs of abandoned dogs roaming through villages where all the people had been wiped out. This sparked some superstitions and prejudice against dogs during the Middle Ages that lasted until the Renaissance, when dogs became very popular again.”

High Esteem -- “Overall, people have held dogs in very high esteem. Interestingly, the Eskimos of the Arctic region, and the ancient Egyptians both believed that dogs guided you to the afterlife and testified on your behalf. The Romans had ‘healing dogs’ that they believed could help cure diseases by licking people. Dogs have been highly regarded by all cultures because they have two of the qualities that people most admire: loyalty and forgiveness. No matter what you do to a dog, it’s always ready to take you back.”