For years scientists have thought that humans and dogs have been together for approximately 10,000 years, about the same time that people crossed the Bering Straits and wandered into North America.
Ten thousand years is a long time. It's long enough for dogs to have become everything to humans, from teacup poodles to St. Bernards, from hunting companions to cuddle hounds.
Research on the dog genome is progressing, and it now looks like dogs and humans have been best pals for ten times longer than orginally estimated, a hundred thousand years!
"We think there was a series of domestication events in East Asia," said Norine E. Noonan, a dog researcher at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. "It happened a lot longer ago than anybody once thought — at least 100,000 years ago."
(to read the entire AP article click HERE)
The lifespan of a protohuman must have been shorter than that of the modern homo sapiens. Because of modern medicine, people are living longer than ever before, and dying of diseases that we generally didn't get so much before because we didn't live long enough to get them. Dogs are living correspondingly longer lives as well, and suffering from many of the same maladies in old age that their masters do, notably high among them, cancer. Dogs came out of the caves with us, and are going into the future with us, including into the future of medicine, and the future of painful and humiliating conditions.
One hundred thousand years of co-evolving, and still our best friends have lifespans only a fraction of our own. There has to be a reason for this situation. Is it a spiritual or scientific reason? I'm sure there is a scientific answer, but I don't know what it is. But I might have an answer from the spiritual point of view.
Anyone who has ever had a dog that he or she has loved, knows how wonderful that relationship is. A dog loves you no matter who you are, what you look like, whether you brush your teeth or not, wear dorky clothes, or have severe flatulence problems. In fact, they might even like you better if you smell bad and have stinky gas. Dogs are known world-wide for their loyalty and companionship.
If I am sad, Stevie comes and lays his head on my lap, or sits very close and offers his paw. I can't describe the look in his eyes, it's shaken up more than one person to see how Stevie looks at me. The intelligence and compassion visible in those golden brown eyes is luminous. I've never seen a look like that on the face of a cat. The cat's eyes look like pretty marbles compared to Stevie's eyes.
Dogs have been with us for so long, that they are genetically engineered (though not intentionally, but rather, by natural selection) to anticipate us every step of the way. They watch us with eyes that have seen generations of humans, and we see them with eyes that have seen generations of dogs. Surely humans have chosen the dogs who were most attentive and intelligent over those who were surly and uncooperative. I believe that dogs have been watching humans and putting two and two and two together for all these centuries. The dogs who could anticipate our moves soonest were the ones who got to go on hunting trips, or treks to other territories, or even just to the villiage down the river. And t his gave them an advantage because along the way, they'd meet and mate with the other dogs who were along with their humans. This process, repeated over generations, would certainly select those dogs most intuitive, most attuned to their humans.
Stevie watches me intently, as all dogs watch their humans intently, to see what is going to happen next, to guard us, and to be sure to be in on the fun if something exciting happens. For instance, if I stand up in a certain way, Stevie instantly knows, just from my posture, that I am going to put on my coat, which means a sequence of events that will include going outside and possibly (oh doggy joy!) a ride in the truck. And he is ready the instant I stand up just that certain way that he has learned means all those things.
Dogs are pack animals, and humans are social primates. The facial expressions of dogs are much more easily read than the facial expressions of cats, parrots, or other pets. Dogs and people are both chow hounds! People and dogs enjoy many of the same activities.
People love dogs more than any other animal. Perhaps this is because those who had good relationships with dogs had a better chance at surviving. If you had a dog to guard your flocks, or help you hunt, even guard your children, you'd have a better chance of surviving.
Co-evolution has to work both directions. No one has done research, (that I know of), on how our own genome has been affected by our relationship with dogs. But I have no doubt that it has. We are bound together by biology and history.
So why, I ask again, do dogs, so useful to humans for centuries, not live the same or similar lifespan of a human being?
The only answer I can give, lacking a scientific answer (which I am sure must exist and is no doubt just as true as my own answer) is that dogs, the animals we carry in our hearts and in our genes, are here to teach us how to lose someone we love dearly. They are here to teach us many things, not just that, of course. We learn responsibility, loyalty, compassion and much more from our best friends. But in the end, we have to learn to let go. And this is the gift they give us. A chance to "practice" what the death and dying process is all about. We must learn to deal with the loss of a best friend, and if we decided to continue our relationship with another dog, we must learn that lesson over and over.
It's never the same, but it's always the same. Every ten to twenty years we aren't quite the same people we were, and then we once again deal with the loss of a loyal friend, who has been our companion and so much more for all those years.
We learn how to say good-bye. And we learn how to keep on living.
Outside this window is a bird feeder where squirrels and birds are flitting about. Sofia and Kittymao sat for at least a half hour together totally absorbed in the show.