but theres a much wider range of form factor for dogs – horses are all pretty much horse shaped, give or take. Theres a much wider range is shape and proportion with dogs
Aye, but I was trying to say that horses were used for three main tasks weren’t they? Riding, pulling or carrying. Hence we’ve bred with the for those three things. Ostensibly, they’re also more trainable and intelligent than other beasts of burden so within the realms of riding, pulling or carrying, we could breed a bit more. But at the end of the day, they were for riding or pulling or carrying. Hence horses still all look much the same.
Dogs had a multitude of other uses – hunting (and within that: killing, pointing, fetching, chasing), carrying, pulling sleds, rescue, shepherding and companionship (and plenty more I’m sure). So we bred for all the characteristics we needed, constantly refining and refining, often to the detriment of certain “breeds” of course. Who knows? If horses had the same variation of usage, we may have messed about with them to the same end result in terms of variation in physical characteristics.
EDIT: Also, as mcc said above, dogs have almost evolved with us – we’ve been messing with them for millennia whereas “domestic” cats have bred amongst themselves, choosing their own mates hence being slightly more homogenous. AFAIK, we’ve only been arsing around with cat characteristics for a few centuries.