I'm half-way through Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond, and I'm struck by the similarity between the implicit agreement made between humans and wolves in 10,000 BC which led to their domestication, and the explicit agreement made between Vlad and Loish's mother (and later, between Vlad and Rocza), ie: help me hunt, in exchange for long life & easy meat. No big surprise there, but it's not often one is struck by the thought, "hey, this reminds me of Brust" while reading dense history texts. Which led me to wonder: Has anyone else in Dragaeran history ever attempted to domesticate wild jhereg? Is the natural lifespan of wild jhereg on a (I'll avoid the word "human" here for the sake of clarity) Dragaeran-scale, or a Fenarian-scale? Assuming the later, shouldn't one expect to see, over the next couple of reigns, a similar pattern of selective breeding and "artifical selection"? By the time the next Cycle comes around, will there be the jhereg equivalents of Dachshunds, Poodles, and Weimaraners running around? marty