A new ten-stamp set issued by Royal Mail on 6 June celebrates man’s best friend – the dog. Dogs have shared our lives for thousands of years – working, hunting, guarding and being our friends. Over this time, many different breeds have evolved and developed, but regardless of type, dogs have remained loving and loyal. It is little wonder that they are so popular, with more people around the world owning a dog than any other pet.
The relationship between dogs and humans can be traced back tens of millennia. At one burial site in Germany, for example, dog and human remains from around 14,000 years ago were found together, suggesting that dogs had been domesticated by at least this time. Fossil evidence from Belgium indicates that the evolution of the dog from an ancestor of the grey wolf and other wild canids was happening around 31,000 years ago.
Over time, dogs became an
