The total rule against dogs is a relatively modern interpretation in islam. It isn't even to do with the dogs themselves, but that most dogs were smelly and unclean creatures. There is plenty of evidence that the ban really only applied to mongrels, unclean street dogs. Working dogs (hunting/herding/guarding) particularly those similar to salukis, were not considered unclean and were kept. The Quran specifically states that animals caught by trained hunting dog may be eaten (005:004) with the necessary implication that they may be kept and trained.

The fear of black dogs is very much ingrained in many Muslim countries. But that tradition predates islam altogether and is widespread even in the west (black dogs are far less likely to be adopted).

i also wonder if muslim countries suffered significantly less from the plague.

edit:

according to wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death#Recurrence), that's not the case:

> The Black Death ravaged much of the Islamic world.[91] Plague was present in at least one location in the Islamic world virtually every year between 1500 and 1850.[92] Plague repeatedly struck the cities of North Africa. Algiers lost 30 to 50 thousand inhabitants to it in 1620–21, and again in 1654–57, 1665, 1691, and 1740–42.[93] Plague remained a major event in Ottoman society until the second quarter of the 19th century. Between 1701 and 1750, thirty-seven larger and smaller epidemics were recorded in Constantinople, and an additional thirty-one between 1751 and 1800.[94] Baghdad has suffered severely from visitations of the plague, and sometimes two-thirds of its population has been wiped out.[95]

Dogs are unclean in Islam. It's not haraam to own dogs, but many Muslims don't touch dogs.

If you read "The Innocents Abroad" by Mark Twain (written in ~1850 or so), he writes a lot about the bad treatment of dogs in Arab countries (or at least in Turkey).