When did the First Dog Beds Appear?

There has been much said and written about how and when the wolf evolved from wild animal to domestic dog. The experts are still not sure, but it seems to be between 10 and 30 thousand years ago. The wolves became more friendly as both man and wolf could “see the benefit” of each others company. Often people say that man began to understand that having the wolf/dog around provided him with protection and hunting became better. While I think this is undoubtedly true, there is also just the simple fact that man is fascinated when he comes close to friendly and half tame animals in the wild. We love feeding badgers and foxes (well, some people do when they don’t quite understand the damage this does) in their garden and it becomes a great pleasure to a lot of people to see these wild animals coming in close for their food. We love feeding the little birds and even the pigeons in town. I am convinced that early man simply liked to get close and friendly with the wild wolves whilst at the same time he surely would be weary of the wolves as they did pose a threat to early man.

So although the wolves didn’t yet come in to sleep on man’s simple and primitive dog beds that they might have been wanting to prepare for their new canine friends, the wolves would still be hanging around for some food scraps etc. I can just imagine how early man would want to get closer and closer to this inquisitive wild wolf in an attempt to eventually feed it by hand and perhaps stroke it. I don’t know a lot about wolves, but apparently they have nursing “aunties” as in other female wolves that will help out at the time of another wolf’s whelping time. You could imagine how perhaps the early man was able to take that role and almost prepare the “early dog beds” for whelping purposes and hence be a great benefit to the wolf.

Getting enough food home to the pups is always a problem for a mother, so if man was actually turning out to be providing whelping dog beds AND plenty of food for the growing pups, the relationship would have got off to a very good start!

So I wonder how these primitive and simple dog beds would look like. Would they be animal skins or dried grass and straw? Let’s be sure they were not waterproof dog beds as this is almost a very modern invention making use of the best and latest and strongest synthetic materials.

And I also wonder where the dog beds would be for the wolf. At what point did the first wolf/dog spend its first day or night inside the human’s dwelling? I guess that people thousands of years ago would have exactly the same empathy and emotions sprung out of love as we have today, so that first night where a wolf slept inside with the humans would have been on a cold and nasty night where the humans could not bear the thought of their wild canine friend having to huddle outside in the cold. He or she would have opened the door and begged the wolfy dog in on the world’s first dog bed!!