From the archives- How can anyone not like dogs?

I originally had a blog on FunTrivia, where I am an editor and site administrator. FunTrivia will soon be discontinuing its blogs, and these are some that I wanted to keep for posterity.

How can anyone not like dogs?-originally published Feb. 23, 2006

Now, of course, there are all of the usual platitudes- dogs are messy, servile, obnoxious…but really, how can you not like dogs?

If it weren’t for dogs, you probably wouldn’t be sitting at this computer, reading this. Are you aware of the recent research on how dogs shaped human evolution? We are the only distance-running primate- we probably evolved that way to keep up with the dogs that helped us hunt. We worked together as teams to find food. Thus, we out-competed the other hominids such as Neanderthals. Dogs helped keep enemies and predators at bay, giving us the ability to relax and develop culture by the fireside and grow the big brains we need. . And, as they evolved, dogs developed the ability to read and interpret human behavior better than any other animal, even the chimpanzee.

And, as we evolved, dogs found our food, retrieved our game, herded our sheep, pulled our sleds, tracked our lost children, defended our soldiers, rid our houses of vermin, rescued our drowning people, guarded our houses, guided our blind and otherwise did everything we asked of them.

Dogs made us what we are, and all they asked was a place at the fireside and a bone to gnaw. And they have stuck beside us, despite what we have done to them- laboratories, dogfighting pits, racetracks, overbreeding, abandonment, and all of the other atrocities we have committed against them.

So how can anyone not like dogs?