"[T]he Balinese, though they have lots of them - mangy, emaciated, endlessly barking creatures, kicked about like offal in the road - despise [dogs] with an almost pathological passion born of the notion that they represent the demonic end of a god-to-human-to-animal hierarchy." - from Clifford Geertz, "Local Knowledge: Fact and Law in Comparative Perspective"
"There has been a great surge lately of scientific and not-so-scientific publications claiming to show the medical benefits of canine companionship in lowering our blood pressure and cheering up old folks in nursing homes. I would be the last person to deny the very real joy and pleasure that dogs bring. But neither joy nor pleasure, nor even low blood pressure, is an evolutionary force that carries very much weight. For this much-vaunted 'human-companion animal bond' to have been a force of evolutionary significance—for it to be the biological glue that holds our species together, as the authors of such papers claim—it would have had to confer some tangible, adaptive value to humankind that translates into net increased survival. The key word here is net, and if one objectively adds up the biological benefits of dogs and sets that against the biological costs, it does not compute. The relentless force of evolution has no room for sentiment, much less retrospective sentiment, and the fact is that tens of thousands of years ago, before there were cities or even villages, before there were farms, before there was writing, before people could afford the meanest luxury, before people fretted about stress, before humans were indeed scarcely human, dogs latched on to human society, survived, and flourished.
"Dogs, in short, are a brilliant evolutionary success almost without parallel in the animal world, and they owe that success to their uncanny ability to worm themselves into our homes, and to our relentlessly anthropomorphic psyches that let them do it. Throughout much of Africa and Asia to this day, millions upon millions of dogs roam freely through villages and even cities; they are generally despised, shunned, justifiably feared as dangerous and disease-ridden, occasionally eaten; yet they flourish in spite of it all. However consciously and rationally humans may dislike or distrust these free-ranging dogs, however much humans may determinedly try to relegate them to the mental category occupied by rats, lice, and pigeons, still, when man comes face to face with dog, the will to inflict serious bodily harm mysteriously melts away. Dogs, in an evolutionary sense, know this. They cringe, they whine, they look soulfully into our eyes, and we say, 'Aww, the heck with it,' drop the rock, and go our way." - from Stephen Budiansky, The Truth About Dogs: An Inquiry Into the Ancestry, Social Conventions, Mental Habits, and Moral Fiber of Canis Familiaris
Don't even get me started on cat people.
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Several of he dude's facts are way off.
Historically (old old days) dogs conferred a huge advantage on people who had them. Hunting / tracking is vastly more effective with dogs. Herders can manage much larger flocks, with much less effort, and with far less loss to predators with herding dogs then they ever could without them. Certain small to mid size dogs (think proto terriers) will keep away rats and other food spoiling disease carrying vermin in much the same way a cat would (though I would suspect the cat may have an edge in that department.)
It is empirically denied that people biologically don’t want to can’t hurt dogs or chase away wild dogs. A lot of that is cultural and I suspect the western author is mistaking his culturally conditioned response for a biological one. In Arabia where wild dogs roam the desert it is/was common practice for the kids playing at the edge of villages to throw rocks at them and shout as they came closer to keep them off the streets and out of the village.
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