Earlier quoted context omitted.
I dunno, it kinda freaks me out. For thousands of years we've been selectively breeding another species to love us unconditionally, and be so subservient to the point of dependence. Imagine if we found out some alien species has their own 'breed' of human they've been genetically engineering for millennia; one that wants nothing more than the company of their alien owners and hates when they leave, that has been bred…
That's not really how it worked. It's more accurate to say that dogs co-evolved with humans in a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship. We've only been actively selectively breeding dogs for a few thousand years. It's a pretty good relationship for the dogs from an evolutionary perspective. All of their needs are met forever, they experience essentially no hardship or struggle, and their species gets a free ride…
There aren't clean answers to these questions, of course. We've essentially just described the same process of wolf-to-dog evolution from the two ends of the spectrum, and neither perspective is entirely wrong or right. I would like to point out a couple things, though:
> Over evolutionary time, wolves adapted to better fit the niche. Not because humans wanted that, but because it was evolutionarily advantageous for a companion species to be more compatible with its host.
Take a step back and consider that statement. What made it evolutionarily advantageous is that humans wanted it. If humans didn't want a more compatible companion species, it wouldn't be evolutionarily advantageous. You can't separate the advantage from human desires.
Selective breeding doesn't have to be entirely intentional. Early humans weren't practicing pedigree breeding on wild wolves, of course, but nonetheless it was artificial selection that drove evolutionary change. And for the past few thousand years, we very much have been actively and intentionally breeding them. Also -- this is beside the point, really, and total speculation, but -- given how early humans understood selective breeding in plants, it seems likely that they had some awareness of the knock-on effects of favoring friendlier wolves.
Regardless, the moral unease I feel is primarily about the current state of having another species tailored to serve our emotional needs, not how we got here. Even looking at dog to wolf evolution as an entirely natural process, does that justify everything we've done and are still doing to modify them to suit our desires? Dogs as a species may benefit from our ownership, but does that make all the individual suffering we cause okay? We think of dogs living a life of privilege and comfort, and many do, but just as many have abusive owners or are living on the streets, often with worse quality of life than wild wolves today.