Regina Regina:
Domesticating canines has been going on for thousands of years.
Many thousands - surely you don't think you're telling us something new? But treating them as pets, rather than a useful tool, that's a much more recent concept, for wealthier societies.
$1:
A burial site in Germany called Bonn-Oberkassel has joint human and dog interments dated to 14,000 years ago. The earliest domesticated dog found in China is at the early Neolithic (7000-5800 BC) Jiahu site in Henan Province. European Mesolithic sites like Skateholm (5250-3700 BC) in Sweden have dog burials, proving the value of the furry beasts to hunter-gatherer settlements. Danger Cave in Utah is the earliest case of dog burial in the Americas, at about 11,000 years ago.