Where did dogs come from?

I wrote about the origin of cats last week, so how about dogs? Well, to me, dogs seem way more varied than cats, both in size and disposition. I’ve seen dogs that barely look like dogs anymore they’ve been bred so much. Again, there’s a discussion in there I’m not willing to touch, at least not today.
 
We have 3 dogs. I love having dogs and wouldn’t want to live without them. They are all mutts, and strays. They all 3 showed up and adopted us, on different occasions of course. They all 3 have very different personalities, and ways to be annoying. Generally, I think of dogs coming from wolves, originally. Healers were bred from the Australian Dingo, BTW. Just a fun fact.
 
The New York Times had an article describing domesticated dog fossils found in Europe from over 15,000 years ago. There is also speculation that dogs were getting domesticated at roughly the same time, in Asia, and in Europe and the Middle East. There may be DNA evidence supporting that theory.
 
For fairly obvious reasons, at least if you have a dog or are a dog fan, they can be quite useful. They can be trained quite readily, some say, I wouldn’t know, and they can then be helpful in hunting, fighting, and protection. That all makes sense for early mankind.
 
I think they make a fairly good friend and companion, if not a bit needy sometimes. It is speculated that all dogs descend from the Gray Wolf, though likely from two time periods. It is also suggested that it would take 130,000 years for the wolf to be bred into the modern dog, which implies that wolves were cohabitating or at least inter mingling with humans well before they were being directly selectively bred.
 
The genetics of dogs is far less mixed up than you might imagine though. Particularly with Pure Bred species. A great article to look at, if you are interested, is from the PBS, which you can find by clicking here.