I do think dog domestication’s much more complex than whether if dogs are self-domesticated or not due to that some owners allow their dogs to roam freely, that makes me think it would’ve also been the case in prehistory as well. In Tunisia, a good number of rural owned dogs roam freely. There’s also another study conducted in a few countries where dogs were also allowed to roam freely, so if some owners allowed their dogs to roam freely today then some prehistoric wolf owners would’ve done the same thing too. As strange as it sounds, it does complicate things when it comes to the real origin of the dog.
It’s not a complete deliberate domestication in that there are studies where the dogs are left to their own device at will, hunting animals against their owners’ wishes and desires and that they roam on their own as it is in some parts of Mexico. It’s not a complete self-domestication in that dogs are kept for hunting and guarding, even if they may even be starved or fed a special diet to do so either. So it could be argued that it’s somewhere in-between in that although prehistoric dogs were owned and trained, they also roamed at will and were even allowed to do so.
The existence of semi-stray dogs does through both theories into sharp relief in that it doesn’t neatly fit either of them, given there are people who allow their dogs to roam freely. It could even be a relic of a culture long gone in that dogs weren’t always tethered and sheltered, though I could be wrong in here it would’ve been the case in antiquity and prehistory. I do think semi-stray dogs give a better idea of what dog domestication’s like, in the sense of the way they’re raised and that they exist in a state between wildness and domestication.
They’re not entirely feral, but they’re not completely domesticated either so they’re semi-feral at that. The earliest dogs would’ve been free-roaming owned wolves that were fed scraps, hunted on their own and may even be starved to go hunting with their owners. That’s based on me reading up on studies about dogs in some communities, but in addition to the revelation that some owners allow their dogs to roam freely that means dog domestication may not be that straightforward.
Compare this to sheep and goats, where they’re not allowed to roam freely to avoid being eaten by predators and both of them are livestock. This means they’d be more closely monitored than what you usually get with dogs, especially if nobody wants their resources gone. If dogs were domesticated like sheep and goat, then more dogs should be kept for meat but dog meat’s not that popular so many more dogs even in Asia and Africa aren’t generally kept as livestock.
(I’m Asian and from my experience, not too many people eat dogs.)
Goats and sheep are also social animals, they even tolerate humans a lot as well but Retrieverman (to my knowledge) doesn’t admit it and whatever his theories about dog domestication may be turn out to be better suited for sheep and goats. It’s actually the case for some dog owners to allow their pets to roam freely, that it’s even the subject of some studies that sheds better light on what dog domestication’s really like.
fynm 