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I'm mostly comfortable with thinking it's evolution as crazy variety and selective breeding came very late to the party. Most in the last few hundred years - lots of the breeds we know are from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.

I would guess that for most of our co-existence breeding was up to the dog to figure out, which might explain the oldest breeds being of a particular region. Task breeds came very much later.

Edit: Also, how do you selectively breed for muscles that didn't previously exist?



> selective breeding came very late to the party

I think that breeding before 17th century was focused on the dogs job such as hunting wolves (Wolfhounds), sheep herding (Border Collies), watch dogs.

When you don't breed for apperance and only have a low number of different kinds of jobs for dogs, then you only need very few breeds.

The Irish Wolfhounds were out of jobs in 1786 (no more wolves in Ireland) and the breed practically died out.




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