Received this on another list and thought some of you might enjoy:
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http://www.abqjournal.com/paperboy/link/news/1news04-11-00.htm

Tuesday, April 11, 2000
Did We Pick Dogs or Vice Versa?

By John Fleck
Journal Staff Writer
    LAS CRUCES - Dogs have been with us for at least 10,000 years.

    But did we domesticate dogs, or did they domesticate us?
    The traditional image, according to Santa Fe archaeologist Dody Fugate,
is one of humans squatting around a campfire with wolves skulking in the
shadows, eventually being invited into the circle.
    Perhaps, Fugate suggested Monday, it worked the other way around, with
wolves inviting humans to join their pack.
    Whichever way it happened, the result has been at least 10,000 years of
co-evolution, as we have adapted our lives to include dogs, while dogs have
genetically adapted to meet our needs.
    Fugate was one of a number of scientists speaking Monday about the
evolution of dogs during a meeting of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science here.
    However the relationship started, it has roots in the fact that dogs and
humans have similar, well-developed social structures, said Colorado State
University researcher Jennie Willis.
    Researchers using DNA have found that wolves are the nearest wild
relatives of modern dogs, and wolf studies have found a social structure
remarkably similar to our own.
    Where a traditional human family has parents, a pack of wolves has an
alpha male and alpha female leader.
    Human children learn through play and socialization, as do young wolves.
    "Perhaps that is a reason why we first sought out the dog," she said,
"or the dog sought out us."
    Whatever the reasons, dogs were the first domesticated animal.
    Whether the domestication of dogs happened once, and then spread among
human culture, or happened a number of different times with different
cultures, remains the subject of debate.
    But by 10,000 years ago, Fugate said, the evolutionary paths of humans
and dogs were joined.
    The result has been a range of different types of dogs, bred for their
special skills in helping humans.
    In nature, evolution works by rewarding creatures better at surviving in
a dangerous world, avoiding predators, finding food and bearing offspring.
With dogs, evolution took a side road.
    People bred dogs for special skills, caring for those with an ability to
help them.
    Dogs seemed to have come to the Americas from Asia with people many
thousands of years ago, Fugate said.
    In the pre-historic America, there were two distinct types of dogs,
according to Fugate - large hunting companions and smaller dogs that chased
rats from graineries.
    In the Southwest, Fugate has found dogs ceremonially buried with humans.
    But that practice began dying out around A.D. 1300, when stress on the
human population in what is now the Four Corners Region gave the dog a new
role - dinner.
    "When they start becoming dinner, they stopped being ritual objects,"
she said.
    In the last few centuries, the evolutionary path followed by the dogs
has taken an odd turn, said University of Pennsylvania dog behavior expert
Karen Overall.
    In the 19th century, breeders began selecting show dogs for their
physical shape, rather than their helpful behavior.
    While some dog competitions, called field trials, are still based on a
dog's ability to do traditional chores like herding, many competitions are
based primarily on physical appearance.
    Dogs that have the desirable traits are bred. But in the process,
behavioral changes can be ignored, leading to dogs that look pretty but have
problem behavior.
    In the past, those ill-tempered dogs would not have been allowed to live
in our human families. The artificial evolutionary natural selection we have
set up for dogs would have weeded them out.
    But not today.
    "We've in a sense relaxed selection," Overall said.