I.

I love dogs.

I grew up in a two-dog household, and my future plans have always included at least one dog. When I pass a dog on the street, I often point and exclaim “Puppy!”, no matter how inappropriate it is for a grown man to do so, because all dogs are puppies and all puppies are adorable and I need everyone to know this.

Why do I love dogs?

They’re loyal and loving and giving, and even though they bark at passing cars and occasionally pee on the carpet having them in my life makes it unquestionably better.

The thing is, dogs as they exist today are a lot of things, but they aren’t natural.

Nature didn’t shape dogs, didn’t produce the breeds we see every day. It wasn’t like Darwin went to an island and found that a species of wolf had been separated by a mountain chain and on one side were Golden Retrievers and the other Yorkshire Terriers.

Dogs exist today as the result of millennia of co-adaptation and selective breeding by humans. They’re animals, yes, and Nature technically made the base form, but we humans molded them into shapes more compatible with us. [...]