A Brief History of Terriers: Part 1

ENTER THE DOG

"It is always best to start at the beginning."

In theory, if you are talking about dogs, this means you are supposed to talk about how dogs evolved from wolves.

I won’t belabor the point except to say that, while true, the statement is a bit overstated. A dog is not a wolf. A dog is a dog.

This is not to say that wolves and dogs are not evolutionarily related — this is an absolute fact. Dogs descended from wolves, probably through some form of long-lasting proto-wolf phase.

That said, the differences between dogs and wolves are not small, but enormous, governing the most elemental issues of existence, from reproduction to communication.

A wolf, for example, goes into estrus only once a year, generally in February or March. A dog normally goes into estrus twice a year, and this can occur in any season. A male dog lifts its leg to pee, while a female dog squats to pee.

In wolf packs, only the top male and top female raise their legs to pee — all subordinate animals squat to pee.

Dogs bark — it is their primary vocalization and maddeningly common, especially early in the morning when you are trying to sleep. Adult wolves bark only rarely.

Wolves and coyotes howl, and do so very frequently — generally in the early evening just after waking up and before going off to hunt. Dogs almost never howl except under very special conditions and in response to sustained noises that rise and fall — like the wail of fire engines. You may have 15 dogs in your yard, but they will not howl every morning as a coyote or wolf will.

The fact that dogs, wolves and coyotes CAN interbreed does not mean they actually do except under the rarest of circumstances.

Dogs and wolves operate on completely different wavelengths, and only in the most extreme kinds of "prison romance" situations do these two animals leap the species barrier, generally only in captivity or in very rare instances when a vanguard of a species (a lone coyote or wolf in a very large area devoid of all other wolves and coyotes) finds it impossible to mate with its own kind.

In short, wolves and dogs have drifted so apart from each other that key signals related to sex, communication and hierarchy are no longer shared.

A dog is not a wolf.

Scientists are divided as to when the wolf split off from the proto-wolf, and when the proto-wolf became a dog.

What seems clear is that the lives of dogs and humans have been intertwined for many thousands of years. During most of this time humans exerted little or no control over breeding, and evolution appears to have worked its invisible hand to produce a fairly common, smallish, coyote-looking dog.

This "pye dog" or pariah dog can be seen prowling the edges of dumps the world over, looking not too different from the dingo or "Carolina Dog" favored by our Neolithic ancestors.

Genetic researchers tracking mitochondria DNA have shown that most of the dog breeds seen in Kennel Club show rings today are of very recent origin.

The supposedly "ancient" Ibiza hound and Pharaoh hound, for example, turn out to have been made up within the last 100 years or so — bred to look like the drawings and sculptures of sleek, slender-necked canines found on pharaonic tombs at the time of Carter. The Norwegian elkhound, a breed supposedly dating back to Viking dogs, was created within the past few hundred years.

And so it is with nearly every breed of dog, with very rare exception.

The terrier, it should be said, is not one of those exceptions.

No terrier breed is more than a few hundred years old, and most were created within the last 150 years.

>> Continue to:  A Brief History of Terriers:  Part 2
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