"Short Wave Sportfishing" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 18 Oct 2004 22:20:08 -0400, DSK wrote:

Short Wave Sportfishing wrote:
Ah, well it's not the dogs fault - it's the owner's fault. Dogs only
do what their masters allow them to do.

That's true. But you see, Doug missed out on that step of the civilizing
process. He's got agriculture down, but domestication of animals...
still working on it.

Agrarians - can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.

As stated, I have a life long relationship with dogs and at one point
was seriously thinking of going into anthropology just to study the
domestication of canines and how they affected early civilization.
When I found out that a great deal of work had been done, I became an
engineer. :)

I'm reading an interesting book called "The Botany of Desire". The author
raises the interesting question "Who's wagging whom?" We think we
domesticate or refine animals & plants, but it may be the other way around.
He mentions dogs as the obvious example, but the book specifically focuses
on apples, tulips, potatoes and marijuana. The tulip issue is particularly
interesting if you think not of the flowers themselves, but of the virus
which causes the most interesting color streaks in the petals. Those streaks
are what caused the Dutch to go bananas in the early 1600s, speculating on
tulips until people lost their homes and their life savings. Was the virus
leading humans around by the nose? It didn't hurt the tulips, but it got
lots of people to cultivate them, just to see if they'd get a color pattern
that would make them rich next season.

I extend the analogy to dogs. "You're so cute and fuzzy! So what if you'll
only crap when you're off our property and on someone else's! I love being a
sociopath and helping you do that, even if it costs my neighbors hundreds of
dollars to clean their carpets!"