Citizen Canine: our multispecies society

What species is our society? I'm guessing that your answer is 'humans'. But our society is made up of several species, peacefully co-existing, and working together for mutual benefit. The most prominent of these, after us, is the dog.
Dogs live with us in our houses, or houses of their own. They consume food from the industrialized food chain just like you- canned meat from supermarket, or raw from a butcher. They walk in our parks. They love sports, such as Frisbee, catch, and running around in circles. They make friends with us, and sometimes fall in love with us, and we in turn, fall in love with them. Archaeologists have found people buried with their pets in graves that are up to ten thousand years old.
Dogs aren’t parasites like rats or cockroaches. No, they’ve got careers: drug-sniffer dogs at airports, guide dogs, tracking dogs, police dogs, hunting dogs, cattle dogs, sheep dogs. Some, in the spirit of agrarian communities, grow up doing what their family have done for generations, such as huskies or Australian sheep dogs. Some, such as those that work for law enforcement or aiding the blind or sick, go to elite universities and graduate only after a lengthy series of demanding coursework. Others, with neither family connections, breeding, or elite qualifications, get their work in the general public doing various odd jobs.
These dogs entertain children, care for the old and sick, Often they find themselves as bodyguards for humans conducting daily exercise, or working home security - a comfortable job for a dog, with few demands and lots of perks. Meals, accommodation, health care, and even free holidays are thrown into the deal.
I say this with not a shred of irony. These are real jobs, and the workers - the dogs - really do contribute to the community, and they get paid to do them. Not in money, of course, because biological and social constraints make it impossible for dogs to use money. Their brains, different from ours in key respects, cannot comprehend the intricacies of the monetary system. Money relies on symbolic reasoning, a peculiarly human talent, so instead, they get paid in other ways: food, shelter, protection, and entertainment. These arrangements almost always transcend the pragmatic requirements and result in bonds of friendship and love.

Communication between dog and man
Communication between the two species is better than you might realise. Dogs can learn the meaning of about fifty human words, far more than any other animal except for certain primates. They certainly understand language far more than cats or horses, two other species with extensive interaction with humans.
People, in turn, can interpret the meaning content of dogs’ barks, and can often find their facial expressions easier to read than other humans. Dogs don’t cloak their feelings in layers of social nuance: they wear their heart on their paw. They can also communicate simple wishes through gestures, such as running back and forth between a human and an object of desire (such as a car, if the dog wants to go for a ride).

Dogs and the law
If we accept that we live in a multi-species society, what are the social policy implications? A radical overhaul of policy would be wrongheaded and possibly counterproductive. Dogs don't have the same rights or obligations as us, and to treat them otherwise would be absurd. Most of our laws don’t apply to dogs. We don't expect dogs to vote, testify in court, or submit income tax returns. We do expect them to obey some laws. Dogs cannot walk freely on roads, destroy property, cause a public nuisance, and are forbidden to commit assault or murder (even on other dogs). Dogs are subject to the death penalty for serious infractions most places on earth. The flip side is that dogs are likewise afforded various protections under the law, at least in most Western democracies: it is illegal to torture or maliciously harm a dog with no reason.
We recognize that the relationship between dogs and their owner-employers resembles a master-slave relationship in many ways. Human slavery is rightly considered an abomination, but interspecies slavery is not immoral for several reasons. Firstly, while communication does occur, it is too limited to negotiate contracts or change of employment. Secondly, even if we could talk to them about these things, it is by no means clear that dogs have the mental apparatus necessary to negotiate them. In fact, the reason they are so useful in society and have found so many niches is that they and we are good at different things. Dogs can track a fugitive for miles based on nothing but scent trail that is invisible to us. With their biologically bestowed sharp teeth, claws, and musculature, they make great bodyguards. However, they don’t do contracts or negotiation. Therefore, the ownership model is the only viable model. But the very fact that they are incapable of advocating on their own behalf is a compelling reason to make sure that the system is ethically sound, as much as can be expected.
Historically, dogs have gotten a good deal because, like humans, they tend to make bad employees when they are unhappy. If they are treated well, feel a sense of community and belonging, and have interesting lives (from their perspective, not ours), then they do their jobs. Looking at it this way, it may be that the system corrects itself.

The future of dogdom
We know that dogs descended from wolves, and from them, diversified into all the dog breeds alive today. In fact, dogs were domesticated over 100 thousand years ago. This must be true because there are too many mutations in the various strains of dogs to have occurred in a shorter time period, such as 14,000 years, as previously thought. These different breeds of jobs have distinct roles and careers. If the past tells us anything about the future, then the trend of diversification is likely to continue. We may find that dog breeds continue to diverge until they become different species.
Because of selective pressure, successive generations will get better and better at all of the things that dogs currently do well: sniffing, tracking, herding, guarding, loving, and combat. Thus, the guard dog, the companion, the sled dog, and the hunting companion may be as different from each other as your average dog differs from a cat. Eventually, these specialised creatures will become distinct species, that we will refer to with specific names, such as sniff-trackers, guardweilers, or fetchers. But for all breeds of dog, communication skills with humans will improve, because regardless of vocation, we like dogs that we can communicate with. It follows that those are the dogs that we will keep, and that will breed the next generation.
Counteracting the trend to diversity is the household pet, the generic dog, which needs to be versatile enough to perform a great variety of tasks. We are likely to ask them to guard our property (a task they take to with gusto), accompany us on walks, play with our children, fetch belongings, and be our companions. And the more versatile the dog, the better the companion. This need for general purpose abilities may act as a counterweight to specialisation, creating a superdog of the future. This creature will be supremely adapted to life in human society, will have levels of skill far beyond the abilities of the dogs of today.
If you wake up and find yourself several thousand years in the future (ignoring the fact that this would be very disorienting), you would be likely to meet such superdogs. They will intelligent, playful, muscular, witty, respectful, and will have the ability, if the need arose, to kill you in an instant.