There is only about a 1 percent difference between dogs and wolves. Yet dogs and wolves parted evolutionary roads 135,000 years ago. A floppy-eared dog cannot lay its ears back in fear or obeisance to a senior canine. The trick is to observe the dog without trying to put a human interpretation on it, which is much harder said than done. Human evolution makes us seek loyalty and love, recognize helplessness, indulge infantile foibles.
Dogs exploit all of the above.
They greet a master at the door and rest their heads on handy knees or feet. But none of the dog's responses is equivalent to the human's. It is the dog's way of exploiting the situation and taking its human for a chump, according to the author. Budiansky also delivers some observations on other aspects of caninedom. But they have only two sets of color receptors to a human's three.