Inside of a Dog_ What Dogs See, Smell, and Know - Alexandra Horowitz [26]
CANIS UNFAMILIARIS
On the other hand, let's not forget that it is only tens of thousands of years of evolution that separate wolves and dogs. We would have to go back millions of years to trace our split from chimpanzees; appropriately, we do not look to chimpanzee behavior to learn how to raise our children.* Wolves and dogs share all but a third of 1 percent of their DNA. We see occasional snatches of wolf in our pets: a glimpse of a growl when you move to extract a beloved ball from your dog's mouth; rough-and-tumble play in which one animal seems more prey than playmate; a glimmer of wildness in the eye of a dog grabbing for a meat bone.
The orderliness of most of our interactions with dogs clashes mightily with their atavistic side. Once in a while it feels as if some renegade ancient gene takes a hold of the domesticated product of its peers. A dog bites his owner, kills the family cat, attacks a neighbor. This unpredictable, wild side of dogs should be acknowledged. The species has been bred for millennia, but it evolved for millions of years before that without us. They were predators. Their jaws are strong, their teeth designed for tearing flesh. They are wired to act before contemplating action. They have an urge to protect—themselves, their families, their turf—and we cannot always predict when they will be prompted to be protective. And they do not automatically heed the shared premises of humans living in civilized society.
As a result, the first time your dog tears from your side, running maniacally off the trail after some invisible thing in the bushes, you panic. With time, you will become familiar with each other: they, with what you expect of them; you, with what they do. It is only off the trail to you; to the dog it is a natural continuation of walking, and he will learn about trails in time. You may never see the invisible thing in the bush, but you learn, after a dozen walks, that invisible things are in bushes, and the dog will return to you. Living with a dog is a long process of becoming mutually familiar. Even the dog bite is not a uniform entity. There are bites done out of fear, out of frustration, out of pain, and out of anxiety. An aggressive snap is different than an exploratory mouthing; a play bite is different than a grooming nibble.
Despite their sometime wildness, dogs never revert to wolves. Stray dogs—those who lived with humans but have wandered away or been abandoned—and free-ranging dogs—provisioned with food but living apart from humans—do not take on more wolflike qualities. Strays seem to live a life familiar to city dwellers: parallel to and cooperative with others, but often solitary. They do not self-organize socially into packs with a single breeding pair. They don't build dens for the pups or provide food for them as wolves do. Free-ranging dogs may form a social ordering like other wild canids—but one organized by age more than by fights and strife. Neither hunts cooperatively: they scavenge or hunt small prey by themselves. Domestication changed them.
Even when wolves have been socialized—raised from birth among humans instead of other wolves—they do not turn into dogs. They strike a middle ground in behavior. Socialized wolves are more interested in and attentive to humans than wild-born wolves. They follow human communicative gestures better than wild wolves. But they are not dogs in wolves' clothing. Dogs raised with a human caretaker prefer her company over that of other humans; wolves are less discriminating. Dogs far outpace hand-raised wolves in interpreting human cues. To see a wolf on a leash, sitting and lying down on request, one could be convinced there is little difference between the socialized wolf and dog. To see that wolf in the presence of a rabbit is to see how much difference there still is: the human is forgotten while the rabbit is relentlessly pursued. A dog near that same rabbit may patiently wait, gazing at his owner, to be permitted to run. Human companionship