When I was in primary school, my father brought home a puppy – my first pet – from a business trip. When he got home after many hours on the road, the puppy was missing. We finally found him in a small recess behind the dashboard. He was tiny, with long, soft black fur and huge, terrified eyes, so we gave him a big name: Nebuchadnezzar. Nebie.
THAT FIRST NIGHT, Nebuchad nezzar was allowed to sleep on my bed, since he was my puppy and he looked so scared and I begged. But my parents were making an exception, and I knew it. The following night he would sleep in his basket in the scullery, and when he got older, he would sleep outside. That’s just how it was, and that was barely 40 years ago: A pet was still an animal – and animals were treated differently to how we treated people.
How has the emphasis shifted from domestic animal to pampered pet in the years since?
RESEARCHERS ARE NOT ALL in agreement on when and how dogs became domesticated. Some claim it happened 10000–14000 years ago; others believe it was at least 30000 years ago. Something else they can’t agree on is whether it happened in Europe, the Middle East or Asia. Some researchers believe hunter gatherers actively tamed wolves and bred them; others believe wolves domesticated themselves by scavenging hunters’ waste and hanging around campfires, thus becoming
