Harry Turtledove's "It's the end of the World as We Know It, And We Feel Fine" (short story): Dog is to Man as Man is to...

According to the story, differences between wild dogs & domesticated ones are mostly confined to a gene called "WBSCR17", a gene also found in humans. Can humans be turned into cute pets?

Update 25 September 2013:  Don Sakers' fiction review article, "The Reference Library", in the same Analog issue that contains this story, has a review of one of Iain M Banks' novel "The Hydrogen Sonata". He discusses, among other things, some key characteristics of the Culture universe of the author where this novel is set. Some of these characteristics of the Culture universe sound a lot like things in this Turtledove story. But I've not personally read any Culture book.

Story summary.

Last big human fracas not only killed off most people, the few left around were relatively docile. And there was something around that intended to presumably make the world a better place...

Here we get a glimpse of this docile future world. Beautiful.

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, March 2013.
Rating: A.
Added to my "best of 2013" list.
Related: Stories of Harry Turtledove.