I've been around lots of dogs, I grew up with friend's dogs, but never had my own. Now that I do, I can see that the dog-owner bond is pretty unique. Definitely way different than cats I had in the past. Like my dog actually responds to me, seems like she understands what bothers me, tries to protect me, has concern for me, can communicate quite a bit of things to me. Then it occurred to me the fact that having a 50lbs to even 80lbs dog is seen as 'Okay', no cause for concern, even okay for young children to be around, is really quite significant. Because cat's that big are NOT trusted by people generally. Even just a 25lbs serval or lynx would be considered high risk to have in a family with kids. But a 60 lbs husky or lab? Perfectly okay, people probably feel safer with their family dog watching their kids. That struck me as a testament to how much more domesticated and compatible to humans' dogs are over cats. Dogs really do become family members, whereas other pets are really just more like pets, as in animals you keep, but they aren't really apart of the social unit.