To transmit you some of my knowledge on dogs, the smaller they are likelier the chance of them being noisy and fierce, to make up for their reduced size. That size was achieved simply by breeding small dogs with smaller dogs until they got to the intended size.
Dogs possess a plastic gene. And that's why we say there's a certain dog breed.
Dogs use a hierarchic structure for social relationships just as in a wolf pack. That means the owner must act as the alpha of the pack, keeping the dog’s respect, who will then behave like an omega. One example is when the owner gets home. Instead of giving the dog the attention it's requiring, one should do something at home first, ignoring and not looking at the dog, no matter how hard it is to do that sometimes. And then, after a while, one can call for the dog and pat him. That sends the message to the dog of who is in charge, whose will is prevailing. A dog that thinks itself to be the Alpha can be a lot of trouble.
Unlike wolves though, dogs don't kill the alpha when he shows signs of weakness in order to assume the leader's role. They maintain the social structure until they die, or until they become leaderless animals. If a dog is raised among a herd of sheep, for example, and with no human contact, it’ll make the sheep its pack. It's not likely that it'll work the same way with snakes.
Also unlike wolves, dogs evolved to pay attention to human actions, and to sometimes ask for human intervention for their own benefit. In an experiment that had to do with obtaining food stored in an unacessible place unless the animal was aided by a human, it was shown that wolves, even if bred by humans, do not possess that ability.
There’s a theory that dogs were initially wolf-runts that approached humans on account of food leftovers, not being able to feed themselves while members of a pack. This specialization could have led to the study of human behaviour, therefore enabling them to establish a communication bridge. Humans tolerated the presence of dogs because of their warning signs, fruit of a many times finer olfactory and auditive senses, as we weren’t the top predator yet.
If you think of dogs trained to aid blind persons, and also of dogs employed in hospitals to raise the spirits of children and thus helping in their cure, among many other examples, and if you also think of those very sad persons who breed dogs for fights and betting on the winner, you'll see that you have as much reason to be afraid of dogs as you have of people.
So if you ever get involved in such a discussion as that of dogs vs cats, which should be as fruitful as those of the chicken and the egg, and of God and the Big Bang, don’t be a pussy.
