Dogs aren’t as inherently submissive and dependent as people assume. Many areas of the world still have town dogs who survive on their own while still being affectionate with humans. All dogs being helpless furry children by default is a newer development that comes out of the west. Dogs weren’t as selectively bred, being shaped into our best friends more by evolutionary pressures than the eugenics programs that are now normalized.

People hem and hah about dingos going extinct by breeding with wild dogs, but dingos are just what works in the Australian outback. They were originally brought to Australia by humans and were often friendly with people depending on the circumstances. These independent dogs outcompeted the Tasmanian tiger and took over their niche, allowing them to be less reliant on humans and less inclined to be friendly. The new wild dogs that successfully mingle with dingos only succeed when they have advantages in the wild canine genepool. Most escaped pups probably die because they can’t survive as well as the original dingos. Dingos are only going extinct if you buy into purity genetics.

Species distinctions are lines we draw based on our efforts to understand the world, not some fundamental truth. Dogs aren’t what we think, and neither are most species. We think about life in a fundamentally limited way and we need to understand those limitations or we’ll get constantly misled by our bias.