Pown dog's doghouse[edit]

Abandoned dogs[edit]

Often people who vacation in rural areas adopt dogs for the duration of their vacation, and then abandon them when they return home. Some of these abandoned dogs become wild dogs, and are often shot by farmers in an effort to protect livestock. Bodies are sometimes tied to fences as warning to other dogs, especially in rural North America. Abandoned domestic dogs who become feral are particularly dangerous; they lack the survival skills of wild canines, as well as the genetic and learned fear of the humans' world. Feral dogs often form predatory packs that attack livestock and occasionally also prove dangerous to humans.

Ancestry and history of domestication[edit]

Molecular systematics indicate that the domestic dog (Canis lupus familiaris) descends from one or more populations of wild wolves (Canis lupus). As reflected in the nomenclature, dogs are descended from the wolf and are thus able to interbreed with wolves.

The relationship between human and canine has deep roots. Wolf remains have been found in association with hominid remains dating from 400,000 years ago. Converging archaeological and genetic evidence indicate a time of domestication in the late Upper Paleolithic close to the Pleistocene/Holocene boundary, between 17,000 and 14,000 years ago. Fossil bone morphologies and genetic analysis of current and ancient dog and wolf populations have not yet been able to conclusively determine whether all dogs descend from a single domestication event, or whether dogs were domesticated independently in more than one location. Domesticated dogs may have interbred with local populations of wild wolves on several occasions (so-called introgression).