“Dogs are our link to paradise. They don’t know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring–it was peace.” – Milan Kundera
When humans emerged from the evolutionary process, they were greeted by a wag of the tail and a lick on the face. It seems like that sometimes. As though we emerged from the primordial ooze and there they were. In fact, we evolved together, and our special relationship with canines has existed since prehistoric times. According to Darcy Moray, zoo archaeologist from the University of Tennessee at Martin, the oldest convincing case occurred “In Germany, about 14,000 years [ago]. Not only was the dog buried, it was part of a human double grave,” (Archeology, November 8. 2006). Furthermore, Moray continues, the oldest evidence of this human/canine bond in North America is between 9000 and 10,000 years old, with dog burials documented from every major land mass in the world except Antarctica.