TV program on the peculiar status of dogs

If you believe, as we do, that God loves us and gives us a special role in His creation, it's hard to believe that dogs aren't part of His plan for us. This Wednesday, August 15, the National Geographic Channel presents a program that may support that belief:"The Science of Dogs."

While not, we expect, explicitly mentioning God, the program does document facts we've marveled at for years. Quoting from the Wall Street Journal review, dogs are:

...a species with more variety...than any other animal on earth. Think about it....cows may be bred to produce more milk, or grow larger, but they still look like cows. Dogs, however, have been stretched, shrunken, and otherwise manipulated into about 400 distinct breeds....they are almost identical genetically to their lupine ancestors...Even so, 80% of the dog breeds...did not exist as recently as 130 years ago....the [new breed called] Dogo Argentino...has been created...to hunt crop-destroying wild boars ferociously, but to frolic gently with children...A scientist in Russia has fabricated a new animal...that yearns only to sniff for explosives....all this fine tuning...is possible because of unique characteristics of dog DNA. That's all explained here, along with experiments showing what may be the most pronounced difference between wolves and dogs - which is the latter's instinctive view of humans as partners.

Where did this "instinctive view of humans as partners" come from? If it came from selective breeding, as an evolutionist would insist, the trait still has to have existed in wolves to begin with. Why would any wolves have had such a trait? From what we've read about the (speculative) history of dogs, the first dogs were wolves that came into primitive Man's camps to help defend against predators or clean up the garbage, or perhaps both. It was a relationship of mutual benefit from the beginning. Even today, wolves sometimes live with people in a manner not too different from domestic dogs. We don't believe there's any other wild animal that has that sort of automatic connection to humans (certainly not cats, as we'll discuss in future entries). Why is this? And whence comes it, if not from God?