Book review: Our Debt to the Dog, Bryan Cummins

Bryan Cummins huge contribution to the current abundance of books about dogs, their history,  and origins deserves a reserved spot on every reference shelf - public or private. He gives us an immense book that could easily have been 3 or 4 books, or more. He gives us a compendium review of the existing literature, most notably, to my mind, from historic mentions, but right up to the Coppingers and Derr. This book is comprehensive, rational, and exceptionally well done.

Some may find his writing a bit dry. Cummins doesn't give us an emotional take on the topic. I found his writing interesting, but so densely packed with information that I preferred to digest it in bits. It will certainly go on my bookshelves to be referred to again and again. And I will be making plenty of notes in the margins!

Cummins covers the many roles dogs have played in human society. We see them as hunting companions, herding and guarding workers, draft animals, their role in various religions, and on to dogs as fighting machines, both in blood sports, and at war.

On the topic of herding dogs and their history, the subject I was most interested in, Cummins provides a supremely comprehensive review of historical sources who have written about dogs used with livestock, either as guardians or herders.

Cummins is not perfect. He did miss at least one source that I know of - Iris Combe on herding dogs of the UK. And he pictures two breeds, the German Shepherd Dog, and the Rough Collie, as being typical of a certain type of herding dog, when they are both manufactured breeds that have only existed in modern time. (This is absolutely true for the GSD, but could be quibbled about with the Rough Collie. However, it is recognized that the rough collie has, for well over 100 years, been bred for appearance, not function.) Such minor points will also be found in other areas - but these are truly minor points of little significance.

Cummins brings us more good material on the history and cultural anthropology of dogs, in one book, than any other I have seen. And, he does it thoroughly and thoughtfully. The annual convention of the "Dog Writers of America" (2013 or 2014) honored the book with an award of excellence. And well deserved!

Ruffwear booties - a quick review

Ruffwear booties are not cheap. And here is my quick review: FAIL.

I bought a pair because the store thought they were a good product. I needed something to protect Klinger's feet while he healed from an injury. They rubbed his ankles raw, and came off, usually when he was running (the MOST inconvenient time).

So, I added socks. That was worse. And, I put them away, in a drawer somewhere. Along come Amy and Andy. Andy tears a pad, and needs booties. So I give them another try. This was even worse - I could NOT get them to stay on Andy.

Then Amy had some icing issues in the snow, and I tried them on her. Same thing. They rub when they stay on, and then they come off when they shouldn't.

I don't have the faintest idea how to improve this design, but I know what I will try next. Next time, I will try buckskin booties that TIE at the top - like a moccasin.

Like these: https://www.dogmocs.com/

Ruffwear? Fail.

Managing Breeds for a Secure Future: Strategies for Breeders and Breed Associations by Phillip Sponenberg

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Sponenberg has given us a volume of 24k gold. It is mostly about livestock, but it covers dogs quite well, also. In all that, he manages to clearly convey the concept that the varieties of animal breeds are gene pool reservoirs for an adaptation that was appropriate somewhere, at some time. And that those genes are no longer otherwise available as the foundation stock no longer exists in the wild. And he also discusses the impacts of show breeding - and losing genes that way. And more.
He covers aspects of reviving and restoring rare breed gene pools, and just plain healthy breeding practice. The last couple of chapters go into various breeding patterns quite thoroughly.
This is a valuable volume, I would think particularly for today's revival of interest in small-farming and heritage breeds. For those people who've been breeding for 30 years, it would offer less value, but still might contain some useful nuggets. If you are involved in heritage or rare breeds, or just want to start a small-farm commercially, this deserves a place on your reading list. And it deserves a prominent place on library reference shelves.



View all my reviews

It's a dog's world: the new library

It is incredible how much research is going on with dogs these past 20-30 years now! From black hole to nova status.

Some recent additions, note that most of these are borrowed from the library rather than purchased to actually add to my physical library. I gave up on keeping books over a decade ago. I haven't the resources, and modern computer archiving is too powerful. 

Pierotti and Fogg, Mark Derr, and the Coppingers (Ray and Lorna) you know about. BTW, my reviews of Pierotti and Fogg are going downhill - it appears their book misrepresents the findings of at least one other researcher (more than just the Coppingers): Marion Schwartz's fine volume, History of Dogs In the Early Americas. But put her book on a list of important volumes to read.

Also: Phillip Sponenberg: Managing Breeds for a Secure Future: Strategies for Breeders and Breed Associations, Second Ed.

He delves into how breeds can be reservoirs for certain genetic combinations. And it was great to read his thinking on the matter. What was also great was that he recognized exactly the place I think I'm coming from on breeds of dogs, and recognized that there is validity in the outlook that our definition of dog breeds may be overly restrictive. He mostly talks about other farm animals - sheep, goats, beef, fowl, but dogs as well. Good stuff.

Bryan Cummins: Our Debt to the Dog. Wow - so much to read! I've skimmed over a few random spots - it looks like it is chock-full of gold. I'll have to read more, but I might have to buy my own copy of this one. It covers a lot of territory I've been thinking about - the origins and development of breeds and job-specific dogs.

Coming soon, to my reading library:

Dawn of the Dog, The Genesis of a Natural Species, Janice Kolner-Matznick (had to buy a copy, library could not get it!)

from the library:

The genius of dogs : how dogs are smarter than you think, Author: Hare, Brian

The dog wars : how the border collie battled the American Kennel Club,  Author: McCaig, Donald.

Also, I will note, because this volume has been in many conversations regarding English Shepherds: Iris Combe's "Herding Dogs: Their Origins and Development in Britain". Mrs. Combe was "A Person of Interest" in the collie communities in the late 20th century UK. Her volume is a collation of her lifetime interest in the history of collies in the UK. It includes much that was verbal history alone, but also news clippings and antiquarian volumes. Definitely a permanent addition to the dog section of the bookshelves.

Coppinger, Derr, Pierotti and Fogg: when and how did dog become dog? Episode 2!

Why are dogs dogs, and not wolves? First of all, pretty much everybody who has ever dealt directly with wolves, coyotes, or dog-hybrids agrees: the animals are wild. They are not domesticated, nor tame. They are. not. dogs.

Pierotti and Fogg (last post) try to convince us that the First Nations, the aboriginal Americans, regarded dogs and wolves as the same thing. But wait a sec - they didn't use wolves to lug the travois, did they? No, they didn't. They used dogs. Ipso facto, Pierotti and Fogg are full of it.

I have a number of other issues with the Pierotti and Fogg book. They portray the First Nations as monolithic in belief regarding dogs and wolves. They weren't. Good science shows that the First Nations of the Americas had just as wide a variety of response to dogs as did European and Asian cultures. Some ate them, some revered them. Some buried them with their dead. And some scorned them as dirty.

They also portray "Western" culture as monolithic. And it was not.

The Pierotti and Fogg book is persuasively written. It reads well, and fairly easily. But, unlike Coppinger, or even Derr, they don't really present us with anything more than their own ego-stroking and bias confirmation.

However, the idea that man and wolf (which wolf was NOT the grey wolf we know today) had a commensal (mutually beneficial) relationship prior to the dawn of agriculture and permanent communities has backing in what little science there is. And, it is a logical concept. Personally, I find this concept just as good, rationally, as Coppinger's thesis that dogs developed as a result of the dawn of permanent human communities. All this does is deliver a variety of wolf, which is pre-disposed to be friendly to humans, to the scene at the dawn of agriculture, some 10k to 25k years ago.

Good science tells us that dogs are not descended from grey wolves, but rather that grey wolves and dogs are "sisters" in evolution - likely descending from a single "parent" type of wolf, a wolf that does not exist today.

By the way, although I've said this before elsewhere, Derr focuses on this same concept - that wolves developed a mutual relationship with humans prior to the advent of agriculture. Derr, I think, allows for the possibility of human control over the interaction.  Which I doubt, but it is possible.

And, again, I close with this thought: the advent of agriculture and permanent communities saw a distinct change in the physical appearance of the wolves we now call dogs. That significant development in the history of mankind was accompanied by a significant change in the animals we now call dog. Regardless of how dogs became dogs - they came to us through that filter of village dogs.

Coppinger, Derr, Pierotti and Fogg: when and how did dog become dog?

Thoughts on the evolution of dogs, according to the Coppingers, Derr, Pierotti and Fogg.

The Coppingers, Laura and Ray, led the way. At least in public pronouncement, about how wolves probably self-domesticated, and man likely did little or nothing.¹ Up until the 1980's, the common presumption was that man somehow managed the domestication process. Somewhere around the 80's or 90's, people actually started looking into the archeological and anthropological records to figure out what dogs were, and how they got here. In retrospect, it seems almost odd, but very little research had been done, earlier than that, about what dogs were, and how they came to be domesticated. A research black hole, if you like - certainly something of a vacuum. Since then everybody and their brother has been rushing to fill the gap.

The Coppingers' primary thesis on the evolution of dogs is that, (a) dogs are wolves who adapted (evolved) to fit into the space alongside human communities, and (b) that this was precipitated by humankind's development of permanent communities at the dawn of agriculture, and (c) that it was the wolves themselves who evolved to fit this niche environment (not humans, shoehorning wolves into domestication). All animals, including people, are opportunistic. If they see a niche they can occupy safely, they do. So the Coppingers think that some wolves saw the opportunity to live alongside man, and live off the easy pickings of mankind's scraps and leftovers.

But some people don't like that idea². Most notably to date, Mark Derr, who published, ten years after Coppingers' first book, How the Dog Became the Dog: From Wolves to Our Best Friends. Derr is vehemently opposed to the idea of dogs as "dumpster-divers". And, he presents a lot of good arguments that the domestication process, or, at the least, a mutually beneficial commensal relationship, began prior to mankind's establishment of permanent communities at the dawn of the age of agriculture.

Pierotti and Fogg's more recent book, The First Domestication. How Wolves and Humans Coevolved (2018) expands on Derr's thesis. They take it in a slightly different direction, and they expand on Derr slightly, going so far as to speculate that wolves and mankind entered a mutually cooperative relationship at some point in the stone age. (That's paleolithic and mesolithic if you prefer 25-cent words. )

My book review on GoodReads:
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Another entry in the "dogs are wolves" category, this book suffers from extreme bias and mischaracterization of other scientists' recent work. In particular the authors represent the Coppingers' views as 180 degrees opposite of what the Coppingers said. For instance, on page 21, they represent the Coppingers' views as "the process of domestication began with wolves being dominated by humans", when the Coppingers' view was precisely the opposite - wolves self-domesticated into an opportunistic commensalism with humans, i.e. taking advantage of leftover human resources. At a couple of points, they represent the Coppingers as arguing for the scientific reclassification of dogs as wolves, when Ray Coppinger was precisely opposed to that move. It makes me wonder if the authors have treated others of their sources, with whom I am less familiar, as cavalierly.

They also oversimplify and generalize both "Eurocentric" or "western" influence and conquest, and indigenous peoples. Neither of those categories were culturally monolithic, but the authors would like you to believe they are.

However, one of their ultimate points is that the domestication of dogs began prior to the advent of agriculture and permanent communities, and in this regard, there is science that backs them up. This is pretty much the same thesis that Mark Derr proposes in his books and articles on the topic. And, while they are both dismissive of Coppinger, they both propose a similar conclusion - it was not man who domesticated wolf, but wolf who domesticated himself into dog.

Pierotti and Fogg, and Derr all suffer from ignoring, or attempting to ignore, the elephant in the room: the village dog. Whether the process of domestication began 250,000 years ago, or 10,000 does not change the fact that the physiology of dogs changed markedly at about the same time that mankind began inhabiting permanent villages. And our dogs of today, even if they still occasionally crossbreed with wolves, are not wolves, but dogs, and they come to us through the filter of the village dog. Every dog that we call dog today exists primarily because of village dogs. The occasional interbreeding that Derr, Pierotti, and Fogg would like us to believe is of primary concern are minor eddies on the banks of a great and massive river.

My conclusion and recommendation: take a pass on this one. It adds little to the conversation, although in some ways Pierotti and Fogg do a better job of persuading the reader than Derr. If you are determined to learn more, it can be worth reading, so that you have some idea of the breadth of viewpoints that are currently out there, but be mindful that this is only one. If we revisit this topic in ten years time, I believe there will be other books, with better science on the topic. Just as an example, Science magazine published an article in 2015 on how dogs utilize the oxytocin feedback loop (and wolves don't). There is serious and major science going on in this field right now.
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One corrollary question I did not address in detail in the review (avoiding TLDR), is why I am so sure that dogs are dogs and wolves are wolves, and while the twain shall meet, they are NOT the same.

First of all, that Science article I mentioned in the review, back in a 2015 issue, on the oxytocin loop and dogs? I have a strong hunch that is a groundbreaking study, on defining what dogs ARE. One of the reasons cited for revising the scientific classification of dogs to wolves (subcategory dogs), was the inability to put a finger on what made dogs different. Dog vary widely in body types and behavior - and the argument goes "With all those body types, what IS a dog?". Well - that oxytocin loop may just provide the answer. It's not the size of the dog in the fight . . .

TO BE CONTINUED!

1. You'll find a review of his books earlier in another blog post, found here.
2. "Oh, there's a big surprise!" -- Iago, the parrot

Adam Smith's invisible hand

When Adam Smith talked about an invisible hand, he was assuming that the basic infrastructure of society was in place - or that market participants would provide the infrastructure to maintain a peaceful market through rational self-interest. What history repeatedly schools us on that is that people are not rational, except secondarily. A “free” market requires rules of behavior. IMO, Ostrom’s work regarding the “commons” proved this. The problem arises, often, in balancing rules and freedom, but complete freedom doesn’t work. Some market actor WILL take advantage - happens every time. Too many rules are also stifling - or rules written by the wrong set of participants. Like a king - not a good person to write the rules, as they are disconnected from the market.