Crucial elements of the conventional wisdom have been purged from our memory. First off, while no one really knows who first domesticated dogs, traditional narrative points to women, not men. In pagan legend, dogs were the companion of the Goddess, guarding the gates of the afterworld. As carrion-eaters, dogs were associated with funeral rites. Semitic myth that transformed the Goddess into the Angel of Death also said only dogs could see her and know when to howl at the moon.
Irish myth says two dogs guard the gates of death.
The Babylonian fate-goddess Gula's symbol was a dog. Adonis was torn to pieces by the dogs of Artemis. The Celtic Hounds of Annwn, whom some scholars say were goddesses, hunted souls in packs. Christians renamed them the Hounds of Hell, probably after the dogs of the Norse Goddess Hel, ruler of the land of death whose lunar wolf-dog offspring ate the dead and carried their souls to paradise. The dog as keeper of the home, guardian of the threshold sacred to the women, is common in antiquity.