Times Wingèd Chariot

Back in those days, wolves were the smartest and most dominant animals on Earth.

They had no predators, and they had the comfort of their pack, which, while sometimes combative, still felt like family.

But, inevitably, there were struggles. Nights were often cold. Many hunts were a lot of running about for not much food. And wolf claws were too sharp to provide the belly scratches they craved.

After howling back and forth for awhile, they came to a natural conclusion: what they needed were servants; some kind of lesser lifeform they could control completely. These servants would provide heat and shelter, they could help with hunts, and they'd have the manual dexterity to scratch their bellies just the way the wolves knew they'd love.

Once these servants were available and widespread, the wolves' problems would be over. They would each lead their own pack of servants, freeing the wolves to live tongue-lolling lives of bliss and ease.

Amazingly–although the technology has been lost to us–the wolf scientists succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. They uplifted the primative primates with whom they shared their forests, and invented the hominids, our ancestors.

Early experiences with the hominids were positive! They could be controlled with snarls and teeth, and their throwing capabilities certainly helped with the hunting. With sufficient training, they could be made to scratch bellies (which felt as good as the wolves expected), and could even perform haphazard howling! While the older wolves complained that howling was only for wolves, younger wolves were happy to give their throats a break and let the hominid have a go.

But nights were still cold. Rain was still wet. And a new threat was emerging: the hominids from other packs. Wolves expected occasional pack vs pack territory battles, and conflict was relatively stable. But all the wolves quickly learned that hominids could tip the scale decisively.

Soon, rumors spread that the pack on the other side of the mountain had better hominids, and more of them.

So the wolf scientist kept up their work, and evolved the hominids more. In fact, they soon found–to their delight and horror–that the hominids began evolving themselves, advancing far beyond what the wolves anticipated or even understood. Fire, tool use, language, shelter building, agriculture, industry... the entire world was reshaped by the hominids who were now humans.

The wolves who stayed wolves, died; the wolves who survived became dogs. A few live on as pampered pets, eating dog food out of crystal bowl and enjoying some version of the effortless life their predecessors envisioned long ago. More live as members of a new kind of pack, mostly indoors and surrounded by a language they do not understand and cannot make. And hundreds of millions more are strays, eking out existences on the margin.

But all have their reproduction controlled, the trajectory of their lives determined by a species operating on a different plane and with little concern for the forebears that originally created them. They all exist in a separate and lower sphere of life, they can all be euthanized with some distaste but no real hesitation.

And they are all dogs, not wolves. Domesticated animals who willingly and permanently gave up control of their world to a new species they neither understood nor controlled.