The human-dog relationship is maybe my favorite thing about being human.

We've bred this companion animal that we're able to bond with so deeply, and I so appreciate the simplicity of the bidirectional unconditional love. So rare between humans, so common human-to-dog.

This article makes an interesting point about dog attention as a focal point in art - not something I'd noticed before, but I enjoy having it pointed out to me.

I dunno, it kinda freaks me out. For thousands of years we've been selectively breeding another species to love us unconditionally, and be so subservient to the point of dependence.

Imagine if we found out some alien species has their own 'breed' of human they've been genetically engineering for millennia; one that wants nothing more than the company of their alien owners and hates when they leave, that has been bred to be perpetually child-like and devoid of critical thinking in order to better please them, is sometimes pampered and sometimes abused but absolutely subject to the alien species' will. They keep us locked in a house or yard most of the day because their world is dangerous for us, and see all of this as totally justified because they're our intellectual superiors. They make posts on AlienNews about how beautiful the alien-human relationship is because they bred us to be the perfect companion; only magnifying the social compulsions that already existed in humans, to be fair, but still fundamentally changing us.

For the record I do understand that selectively bred humans != dogs, but it still just makes me kinda uncomfortable when I think about it all too much.

yet "like a dog" is rarely flattering

That the dogs are just about always subordinates and subservient makes the relationship easier to work -and of course, dogs are happy to comply since it's part of their instinct to be subordinate in the presence of a dominant being (canine or person). Human to human is a little more difficult since outside of structured organization, we don't tend to play subordinate in most Western culture. You do see some cultures where men play an exceedingly dominant role (where women by multiple facets of tradition play the submissive role) and there is less man-woman strife, yet there is man-man strife since outside of structured organizations men don't automatically measure up and decide they are inferior or superior and accept and internalize that relationship (though some Eastern cultures do display deference at a superficial level).

Moms also tend to have a soft-spot for the momma's boys.