Dog Selective Breeding

To be pedantic dogs are pretty selectively bred by humans. Raptor vs Wolf might be more apt

Dogs have been bred for docility not intelligence. Their wild cousins, wolves, are considerably more intelligent, they’re just prone to get bored and engage in undesirable behaviors. I’m told that it’s very easy to teach a tame wolf tricks, but they quickly lose interest in obviously pointless activities, especially as they mature.

Because the dogs we made aren’t naturally selected. We heavily selectively bred for many superficial phenotypes so it’s not strange to see side effects like this.

This is essentially the nature vs nurture debate, but for dogs.

Keeping a dog could be considered worse from the perspective of forced eugenics by our ancestors against canines. Domesticated dogs are abominations, some say.

Bear in mind dogs are pretty unnatural creatures at this point - we've done so much breeding that you can't really assume any natural forces apply to their development at this point. After all, why would any creature develop a facial structure that makes it hard to breathe (like bulldogs, pugs, etc.)? The answer is because humans are selfish.

My counter claim is my experience with dogs.Over the past 50 years, I've a bunch of different dogs from mutts that showed up and never left to a dog that was 1/4 wolf and everything in between.My favorite dog was a pug who was really dumb but super affectionate. He made everybody around him happy and I think his lack of anxiety and apparent commitment to chill had something to do with it. If the breed didn't have so many health issues, I'd get another in a heartbeat.

Dogs aren't people, they're tools bred for a purpose.

Certain dog breeds were selected for intelligence, at what point does breeding a herding dog become an ethical dilemma?

We breed dogs for all kinds of absurd features. Why not try and breed them for intelligence?