...We've committed a multi-thousand year long genocide against dogs, breeding them for traits that we find useful, and usually killing the puppies that don't possess useful traits...
Maltese covered in tumors at 8 years old? That's totally normal. Just like the cancer it inevitably will develop.
Meanwhile feral dog breeds can live up to 17 years just like wild wolves do. Though in the wild, the average lifespan is 5 years. Because of disease or injury.
Sorry to disappoint you, but even just picking your partner off of looks is literally a form of eugenics if you preach being attracted to your partner... Parents who decide to abort a fetus with a terminal illness is ALSO literally and directly eugenics.
Eugenics itself isn't bad, it's just certain morons think THEY deserve to decide such things for and about others.
Cats are ancient aliens. That's why Egyptians worshipped them, that's why their pee glows and why their scratches and bites are so toxic. They're not of this earth. Don't trust them! They're trying to take over and they're being allowed to win!!
If you leave out the fact that we also breed them till their eyes pop out of their sockets, their brains don't fit in their skulls, they are in constant fear of suffocating. Then yes
They're either this or well built, intelligent, and filled anxiety over the impending collapse of the galaxy into a black hole.
"What was that?! A small tear in the fabric of the space time continuum? Demons? Maybe the cat next door is finally going to murder all of us! Ok, probably not. But maybe I should bark at whatever it is just in case. "
those breeds are quite new, for the vast majority of our history dogs have been bred to be healthy, since they do important work and having them die on you is annoying after you put in all the work to train them.
Those "monsters" from the dark were the real heroes back when — braving the orange flickering light that instinctually meant death to sneak scraps from the stabby skin-wearers... Sounds like the original D&D story to me, NGL.
I mean, that's what we want to believe, that it all started with someone feeding a hungry wolf, but knowing humanity it's just as possible it started with a captured wolf and copious amounts of animal abuse.
It's most likely that dogs/wolves just kept eating our waste, staying close to us, and after initial fights humans noticed the dogs/wolves are not being a threat, thus letting them do their thing and observing them.
Then humans eventually figured out that by observing dogs and their reactions, they could see if dogs smelled/heard something which they couldn't. And then started to exploit that.
You may wanna edit this to say trash, it sounds like you're saying wolves followed us around eating our shit, which afaik isn't a theory for dog domestication.
But then what about, say, cows? They were domesticated too, but to the extent that they subjectively like and trust humans (and I've seen very friendly cows) they have been deceived, with very few exceptions. Maybe we deserve them in the purely material sense since they are the products of our labor, but they don't deserve us...
Perhaps not individually - although even there, what is the average lifespan of a cow in the wild? - but collectively there have been far more cow offspring than there would have been if they had not been domesticated.
Also, looking at every other wild species that we've eradicated, they seem to have decided to get in on our good side, which since they aren't extinct may have worked out well for them.
And even individually, if they live >3x longer, in a more comfortable environment where food is provided routinely... it's arguably not as bad a trade-off as it first appears.
A lifetime of slavery ending in death, or try to outcompete the species that invented guns? We might each make a different choice, but they made theirs.
I have heard that argument for animal husbandry, but in today's world the comfortable environment is provided to only a tiny fraction of livestock. If I had the choice to either be a random pig or chicken nowadays, or just nothingness, I rather not exist at all. What's the point of living 3 times longer when you hardly have enough space to even turn around and stand in your own shit? If anything, the longer life span makes it worse.
*Alien ship arrives into orbit. It's powerful energy weapons aimed at major population centers.*
Alien Ship: "Attention experiment 2648.996. It has been 50,000 orbits since your last status report. Name one good thing you have accomplished since we allowed you free reign over this planet."
*Humans hold their beloved dogs as they look up in fear. Dogs lovingly lick their humans.*
Did you know that wild wolves make sure the whole pact eats, but when you give dogs in a pen food, it's every doggo for themselves, and the smallest ones can end up going without?
Ofc they're still more sociable towards humans, but yeah, we just changed who their friends were and who they're aggressive against. Gaslighted them into thinking we're good for them.
really just anyone sitting in the wilderness seeing a creature of any kind at the edge of the light cast by a campfire, the creature could be a friendly sheep and i'd still shit myself into low earth orbit