Hope I dont sound stupid

[Mendel's Balls]

All of our pet dogs were domesticated from wild species and selectively bred over the years to become the pet's we now know today. There are no wild poodles, pugs, german shepards, dalmatians, etc in the wild and there never were any.

How you go from a wolf or fox to a poodle is a great example of genetic engineering and evolution rolled into one. Line breeding or selective breeding is by the way, just a longer version of genetic engineering. And the dramatic changes that occur along the way are inherent of evolution.
There have been experiments that showed how quickly you can go from something like a wild fox, to a human friendly pet that didn't even look like it's wild counterpart in just a matter of 30 or so years, by just selective breeding.
So take a wild fox or wolf and do the same thing but instead of having only 30 years, do it over 3,000 years. That is how we end up with so many different types of dogs that for the most part all came from the same wild ancestors.

The same goes for most domestic animals such as cats, horses, cows, goats, pigs, etc. They all came from a few wild ancestors but over the years have become the many various breeds you see today.

I do agree with the idea selective breeding and line breeding created the vast array of dog breeds we have today. However, the initial transition from wolf to dog may have been more of a cooperative synergy between humans and proto-dogs than a conscious, deliberate domestication effort on the part of early human societies. See the following articles.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/dog/garbage.html

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/dog/slideshow.html

The first linked article makes a good case that the wolves that became dogs may have had more to do with their domestication than humans. Sorta a self-domestication to take advantage of the new niche offered by human settlements.