Maggie's Farm

I don't know if you've ever heard of Mark Derr - most people haven't but he's written a couple of books about dogs and one about Davy Crockett - all of which are very good. He's of the opinion that most anthropologists and other social scientists are wrong about the dog/man team and how it formed. He has had this idea about it being a matter of co-evolution rather than co-dependency and has written a new book about it: How did the wolf evolve into man’s best friend?

One could argue that co-evolution/co-dependency is the same thing, but I think he makes some important distinctions in how the wolf became the dog.

I do take issue with the main thrust of most of the dog/man analysis in that I don't believe the wolf ever truly left the dog. Most dogs, if left to their own devices and survival, revert very quickly to a feral state very similar to the classic wolf pack. The difference between feral dog packs and the wolf pack is that the feral dogs have a rather loose organization with more than one top dog and those aren't always breeding pairs as they are in a wolf pack. In fact, the feral dog pack behaves much in the same way Derr describes when he was doing his research on the wolf researchers.

I love his commentary about The Dog Whisperer" - Cesar Millan. The guy is a good trainer no doubt, but he's got some rather outdated ideas about human/dog interactions.

In any case, I've read his other two dog books "A dog's history of America : how our best friend explored, conquered, and settled  a continent" - 2004 and the first "Dog's best friend : annals of the  dog-human relationship" - 1997. Highly recommended if you can find them - I think they are both out of print.

Anyway, the article is very good - enjoyed it. Hope you do.