DOMESTICATING THE DOG

Here’s a fact: anthropologists claim that man domesticated the dog around 30,000 years ago.
Here’s a second fact: zoologists say that every breed of domesticated dog in the world today are descendants of the grey wolf.

The second fact makes the first sound crazy.

Because 30,000 years ago, Man lived in cracks in a cliff, in cave openings. Man 30,000 years ago was gathered in small clans of twelve to eighteen individuals. And they all lived in the same cave. I know that they were not as bright as we are today, but this much I am sure of; they were not stupid enough to bring a wolf into the cave.

Let me tell you about my cave. For sixteen years we had a cat, the same cat. Her name was Irving. In our home we have a belief that regardless of species or sex all pets should be named after old Jewish men.

Irving died, and our oldest child was so distraught that it was years before we could even think about getting a new pet. One Sunday, we went out as a family to buy a new cat. We came home with a Shih Tzu, Sidney. Those first few months, everything was great…until Sidney began to hump our son’s leg. The next day, my wife announced:

“I have booked the neutering. You need to drop him at the vets at 8:00 am Thursday morning.”

“Why?”

“Because we cannot have him trying to mate with our son.”

“No, not why the neutering. I get that. Why do I have to bring him?”

“Because you are the man.”

“Since when?”


So that Thursday, I dropped Sidney off at the vet. My wife left work early to pick him up. That night, when I got home, the poor guy was—-as you might expect—-a whimpering heap. He was lying on the sofa, crying softly. My wife sat next to him trying to be a comfort, her eyes were filled with tears. I sat across the room clutching my genital out of fear that it might fall off.

The next day, Sid was back to his playful self. But everything had changed; my wife and Sidney had formed a bond. She was his mother now, he was her baby and I was the bastard who had taken him to the vet. This is how it has remained for years. If I sit down he just stares at me, watching every move I make. If my wife sits down he goes, sits next to her, and just stares at me, watching every move I make. Occasionally he looks from me to her and I know he is thinking, “She can do better than him.”

One night, I walked in to the house and was greeted by my wife’s voice. She said,
“You are so nice to come home to. You are so wonderful. I love to look into your beautiful brown eyes.”

Really sweet, right? It would have been sweeter still had she been talking to me. This is when I realized that my wife and dog were having conversations. And let me make this point very clear. My dog doesn’t talk.

Another day, again I thought that I was the one being addressed:
“Who has a warm Tum-Tum?
I should have known. It would have been me had she asked, “Who has a fat Tum-Tum?”

Then things started to change. I overheard this while she fed him one morning.
“I want to get you the healthy food; he only wants to buy the cheap stuff.”
I am not going to deny that. But let’s be honest; Sid would eat his own crap if we let him. The cheap food is a step up.

The final straw was one evening, as I chased my wife around the house. Not in anger, but in the other way. As we ran past Sid the first time, she shouted,
“Protect me from this dirty man.” The second time around, she said, “Protect me from this beastly man.”

I stopped chasing her, then started thinking. I spoke to friends, all of whom had the same story. Man’s best friend was a backstabber. I thought, “How did this happen? How did we come to point where we allowed a carnivorous, love-stealing beast in to our homes?” This made me think about those guys in the cave.

One afternoon, right around dinner time, the clan was in the cave, sitting around waiting for the mammoth to be cooked. All of a sudden, at the cave entrance there was a grey wolf. They all screamed in unison, “Holy shit! There’s a wolf in here!”
Someone close to the fire pit picked up a piece of mammoth and threw it out of the cave. The wolf ran out, grabbed it and left.

The next afternoon, same thing. Lucky there was mammoth cooking. You can serve mammoth for several days. It was a big animal. Someone picked up a piece, tossed it out of the cave…goodbye, wolf.

Now it rained hard on the third day and the wolf was sitting under a tree, trying to stay dry. And he thought to himself, “Well, I’m going there for dinner anyway, I’ll just go early so I can get out of the rain.”

On this day when he walked into the cave, they clan hadn’t started cooking. Everyone looked to the empty fire pit and watched in horror as the wolf walked directly toward the hairy, smelly children. When he got there, he curled up into a ball and went to sleep.

Someone got the mammoth cooking, and when it was ready they woke up the wolf, waved the mammoth under his nose, and threw it out of the cave.
The wolf got up, went out, picked up the mammoth, came back inside and laid down next to the kids and ate his dinner. And that is where he has stayed.

You see, the anthropologists were-half right. It was 30,000 years ago, but it was the dog that domesticated man, taught us how to feed and care for him. We do this all in an effort to stop him from attacking us. We fool ourselves in believing that we are his master. In my cave, I know my place.