Bond With Your Dog Day – May 14, 2025

History of Bond With Your Dog Day

Certified dog trainer and mind coach Tina Elven created the first Bond With Your Dog Day on May 14, 2021, in hopes of dedicating a day to strengthening relationships between dog owners and their companions coupled with improving mental health. To appreciate the benefits of dog ownership, it would be interesting to look into the development of human-canine relationships. Have you ever wondered how the dog sitting next to you ever came to be domesticated? Dogs are thought to have evolved from wolves that ventured into human camps, in all probability while searching for food. As they were tamed, they might have companionship with humans as hunting mates or guards. D.N.A. results suggest all dogs derive from a single extinct wolf population or less likely, a few very closely related ones. The D.N.A. of later dogs does not correspond with any other domesticated species.

However, research suggests it is unclear when or where the first dogs were domesticated. Dog history has been so dynamic that it’s impossible to study their D.N.A. for this particular piece of information. Perhaps this is exactly why the story of humans befriending dogs is so fascinating! There is an analysis that reveals that dog domestication can be traced back to over 20,000 years ago.

This is a confirmation that dogs were domesticated before any other species. To some extent, dog genetic patterns mirror human ones because people took their dogs with them when they moved. Early European dogs were initially diverse, originating from Near Eastern dogs and Siberian dogs. Our canine companions were found widespread across the northern hemisphere at this time. Dogs were already known in five different types some 11,000 years ago. Despite the expansion of European dogs due to colonialism, you can still find these ancient indigenous breeds surviving today in the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Oceania. Needless to say, you and your dog go way back in time.