A Dog's Tale

If you're like me and have a dog you've probably read a bunch of books on dog training, all of which—without exception—base all or most of their understanding of dog psychology on what we know about wolves, on the assumption that dogs are domesticated wolves. Pack behavior, alpha leaders, etc. And if you're like me you may have found that all those training books really didn't help you understand your dog but that somehow the two of you (or three, or whatever) managed to reach some kind of unspoken bargain about the Rules. Yesterday I had an epiphany of sorts about this, reading my favorite zoological blog, "Tetrapod Zoology" by Darren Naish, an eccentric British Ph.D. biologist. Naish lays out the case that dogs may not be descended from wolves at all, but from some as yet unknown and now extinct doggie ancestor. Which would explain a lot, I think, about the minds of dogs, currently dogmatically misunderstood.