Charles Ellicott Commentary Matthew 15:26

"And he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children`s bread and cast it to the dogs." — Matthew 15:26 (ASV)

To cast it to dogs—The word used was a diminutive, and as such, it pointed not to the wild, unclean beasts that haunt the streets of an Eastern city (Psalms 59:6), but to the tamer animals that were bred in the house and kept as pets. The history of Tobias and his dog in the Apocrypha provides the one example in biblical literature of this friendly relationship between a dog and its master .

Even taking this into account, the answer sounds somewhat harsh. However, it did not go beyond the language the woman would have been familiar with and was likely a common proverb, like our “Charity begins at home,” indicating the boundary that gave priority to the claims of the family of Israel over those of strangers. We can reasonably believe that there was no intentional scorn in it, though it emphasized an actual distinction.