is there an excellent, readable history of humankind's relationship with canines?

but of course.

thanks, lauren... very interesting stuff.

one of things i'm curious to track down - and i don't think this is from guns, germs & steel - is the argument that human development was actually shaped by canine characteristics, that we've been hanging out with dogs so long that we have adopted some dog-traits. i think that horses supposedly had similar effects. i'm not really sure if i actually read this somewhere (and understood it properly if i did) or if am just making this up.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/02/0206_020206_lovedogs.html

Stephan Budiansky's The Truth About Dogs has a section on this, as well as more on dog behaviour. It's a good, light-but-solid book about dogs, dog evolution and the dog mind. It isn't at all 'aaah cute puppy'.

DOG LOVE by Marjorie Garber

this is a bit off-topic, but my mother sent me a write-up of a really fascinating study done in Hungary on how dogs interact with humans and how it differs from wolves. it goes a fair bit into the related subject of so-called emotional intelligence, which is probably the most interesting. i can email it if you'd like.

This sounds really interesting. I wonder if any of you remember what this was, 16 years later.