Smithsonian Magazine - Tracking America's First Dog
IT'S NOT OFTEN that a registered breed of dog starts with a castoff that even the pound didn't want and a stray plucked out of the woods. But it is even less likely that such animals would provide one of those rare "Eureka!" moments in science, drawing back the curtain on both evolution and human culture, and providing clues to the mysterious origins of the long, fruitful partnership that exists between humans and canines.
Aiken's Carolina Dogs Have Ancient Ancestry
August 16, 2014
People used to make fun of Aiken residents Jane Gunnell and Billy Benton for their devotion to Carolina dogs.
Why, they wondered, was the couple so interested in breeding a bunch of mutts that had been found wandering in the woods or hanging around garbage heaps? They called the animals yellow dogs, porch dogs, ditch dogs, strays, mongrels and curs.

A Special Breed
On the tracts of uncultivated land at Banbury Cross Farm, north of Aiken, a phalanx of dogs bursts from the cover of the trees. There is no barking, yelping or growling. They break the silence of the clearing only with their quiet footfall and the occasional rustling of a branch or the snapping of a twig.
Annie, lean and foxlike, leaps on top of a hay bale, acting as a lookout for the pack. Quickly, the area at the edge of the clearing fills -- 10, 15, 20 dogs squirming and running in the small patch where thicket merges with field. Then, as suddenly as they arrived ...

Aiken Family Magazine
Carolina Dogs
Discovered by Accident in Aiken; Saved through Dedication in Aiken
So often it is not the big occasions in your life that turn it around; it is the routine that turns into the extraordinary. When combined with the serendipity of personal connections, the accident of understanding can lead to the profound.

Dog Fancy
You've read about the New Guinea Singing Dog (Dog Fancy, Dec. '98). Now there's the Carolina Dog, a descendant of dogs that crossed the Bering land bridge from Asia to North America 8,000 years ago. The breed was in the news recently when DNA testing at the University of South Carolina linked its development with Australian Dingoes.

CAES - CIA
Translated
Look carefully at this dog. Perhaps we are looking, as it were, for the missing link with the primitive dogs of the Americas. And research seems to indicate that the beloved Carolina Dog or American Dingo, has DNA that is closer kinship with the first canine inhabitants of the American continent.