A side note, but having to do with dogs' adaptability....

(I heard about this research on Public Radio somewhere, but the only link I could find was to a New York Times article which is accessible by subscription only. So here's a second-hand nutshell version.)

Humans reared in cultures where hot spicy food is the norm develop a taste for it. If given a choice between spicy and non-spicy dishes, they'll go for the spicy one almost every time.

But dogs and pigs who scavenge food scraps in those same cultures do not develop a taste for spicy foods. They eat spicy food because that's what their human food providers throw out. But, if taken into a laboratory and offered a choice between spicy or bland food, they'll choose bland every time. This is true even if they've been eating nothing but spicy food scraps their entire lives.

Humans learn to enjoy the pain that comes from eating spicy foods because capsaicin (the "hot" chemical in peppers) triggers the pleasurable release of endorphins in human brains. But dogs' and pigs' brains are apparently sufficiently different from humans that capsaicin doesn't provide that same endorphin release. They learn to endure spiciness out of necessity, but they never learn to like it.