Dogs were domesticated for meat.

Interesting article submitted by Coozer-Phile Larissa (a cat lover). From Live Science:

These days, it may seem dogs became house-trained to fit into stylish bags and wear diamond-studded collars. But a new genetic study puts forth a less refined explanation: Wolves may have first been domesticated in southern China for their meat, as reported in a New York Times article.

The study, using samples of so-called mitochondrial DNA from dogs around the world, showed all dogs belonged to one lineage, indicating a single domestication event. (If wolves were domesticated in various regions, the team would expect to find more than one lineage.)

They found the highest genetic diversity in dogs from southern China, suggesting this region was the point of origin as a species tends to lose diversity as it spreads. The results, published last week in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution, also suggest such domestication occurred about 11,000 to 14,000 years ago, a time when hunter-gatherers first settled down in China's communities.

Study researcher Peter Savolainen of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm said the wolves probably domesticated themselves when they started scavenging around garbage dumps in these human settlements. Later, humans likely bred the dogs for their meat, he suggested. In fact, scientists have found dog bones with cut marks, supporting the dog-meat claim.