Chapter 21 Conditions and Rehabilitation of the Working Dog 521History of the working dog
The dog was the first animal domesticated by
human beings, preceding plants and sedentary
agriculture by several thousand years (Larson
et al., 2012). It is currently thought that dogs
actually domesticated themselves by fre-
quenting human refuse piles for food, but
humans evidently figured out very quickly
that there were benefits to having these preda-
tors as companions. Researchers, however, still
cannot agree on when and where geographi-
cally this garbage-instigated partnership first
happened, much less when humans started
using dogs for specific tasks. A recent collabo-
rative effort integrating genetics, paleontol-
ogy, zooarcheology, advanced morphometrics
analysis, and biogeography have now dated
domestication to at least 12,000 to 16,000 years
ago, with domestication possibly occurring in
eastern Eurasia and western Asia simultane-
ously, rather than just in Asia as previously
thought (Larson et al., 2012; Grimm, 2015;
Frantz et al., 2016).
Discovering when the first working dog
appeared is as problematic as identifying the
date of domestication. Taking that next step
from using dogs as a food source to more
actively manipulating their behaviors to make
them hunt, protect, and herd on command
obviously happened at some point. The trick is
determining when. Much as the equine spine
started to show arthritis when humans began to
ride, studies on the morphometric differences
between ancient wolf and dog skeletons have
shown that flattening of the dorsal spinous pro-
cesses in domesticated dogs developed once
they began to be used to carry packs (Grimm,
2015). It is not known exactly when humans
first manipulated dogs’ prey and pack behavior
to assist with hunting wild animals or protect-
ing domesticated hoofstock for food. However,
the first documented artifact showing a dog
wearing a harness is a 2000-year-old carved
knife handle found in Ust’-Polui, Siberia.
Nonetheless, the onset of dogs being used to
pull sleds is suspected to significantly predate
this (Romey, 2016).
The presence of canine working companions
at the sides of farmers, hunting in the forests,
and marching into war demonstrated that there
existed an established relationship by the
advent of modern times. Roman, Greek, and
Egyptian civilizations have left abundant evi-
dence of dogs used for hunting. Napoleon was
known to have posted dogs as sentries in his
campaign of Egypt (Lemish, 2008). By the 18th
and 19th centuries, the use of carting dogs in
Europe (Figures 21.1) was as common as the
use of dogs for herding and hunting. In World
War I, dogs were used by European forces to
perform a variety of specially trained, nonag-
gressive jobs, from finding and assisting the
missing and wounded (mercy dogs) to pulling
small artillery and carrying messages through
the trenches (Figure 21.2).(A) (B)Figure 21.1 For many centuries, dogs have been used to pull carts such as these dogs delivering milk (A, B) and other
bottled goods (B circa 1880). Source: Public domain—PublicDomainPictures.net.