Man's best friend

Ok, I've been thinking...

In dogs, the characteristics that we value most are naively blind loyalty, unconditional trust, eternaly contentment, and generally a dog that's just happy to be alive. Theses animals have been tamed down from their wild form -- their desired traits distilled -- through years of careful and painstaking breeding, often with other closely related dogs. Follow me on this: All these traits and more -- naively blind loyalty, unconditional trust, blissful contentment -- with just a touch of inbreeding?

Is it possible that, after all these centuries of careful refinement of the breeds, we've created not some line of tamed super-canines, but merely mentally challenged wolves?

Well, there have to be animals with mental disabilities somewhere, so why not in our living rooms? How would we know? Think about it? To be blunt, we might be surrounded by retarded (grrr... I hate that word.) animals, and we'd never know...