Are We More Bonded With Our Dogs Now, More Than Ever?
The Dogness of Everything There’s a good likelihood you think of your dog as part of the family. More of us than ever tell researchers we do. For that reason it’s easy to assume the human-dog bond is stronger now than it’s ever been—but is it? Before we had goats and cows to herd, before we had homes to protect, before we domesticated animals of any other species, dogs were our friends and allies. Archeological finds suggest we often relied on them for our lives. With their superior senses, dogs were our hunting partners, our guards against predators, and our companions on journeys into the proverbial woods of the unknown. So deep and strong was the bond between early humans and early canids that dogs play a major part in every world mythology. The powerful symbolism of dogs—and dogness—suff uses our collective conscious. In many mythologies, dogs are guides between
