Ancient dogs

Ancient Images of Dogs Include Restraints?

Posted on by Kari Kenefick
This dog is wearing a leash.

You, like me, may occasionally find youself in need of a canine control device. While I’m not a fan of the dog tie out, I do walk dogs on leash—as is required by our county and city government here in Madison, WI.

If you have read Temple Grandin’s books about dogs, you might feel a tug at your heartstrings while enduring a tug on the leash. Aren’t dogs meant to run freely? Don’t we love to watch them run? Are leashes humane?

When walking dogs I feel the need to protect them, but also a desire to let them live like dogs, sniffing, marking and other behaviors that are all limited when the dog is leashed.

When a report in Science last week showed evidence that our ancient ancestors were using leashes 8,000-9,000 years ago I was: 1) surprised; and 2) felt vindicated from self-imposed dog owner guilt.

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Findings May Reveal Earliest Evidence of Selective Dog Breeding

Posted on by Kari Kenefick
Image showing DeLong chain of islands.
Zhokhov Island is part of the DeLong chain of islands off the north coast of Siberia. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

A report in the June 2, 2017 edition of Science magazine digs into findings from an ancient archaeological site on the very remote and very, very cold Zhokhov Island, to show that the locals, hardy human hunters, not only lived and worked with dogs, but also quite probably selectively bred the dogs for certain traits.

Archaeologist Vladmir Pitulko with the Russian Academy of Sciences has been excavating on Zhokhov Island since 1989, where he has found dog bones as well as remnants of wooden sleds. With archaezoologist Aleksey Kasparov, also of the RAS, they’ve compared two of the most complete dog skulls found to those of contemporary Siberian Huskies and wolves.

Pitulko and Kasparov wanted to first determine if the skulls were those of dogs or wolves. They first employed two key skull ratios: snout height to skull length and cranium height to skull length. Using these ratios, they were able to reliably distinguish between skulls of a modern wolf and husky.

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