I was told that the translation is traditional, but poor -- there are two words for dog and this is the one "kynarion" that means puppy, as opposed to "kyon" (as used in Revelation 22:15) that means "dog" in a perjorative sense. The Mark passage reads a little differently with that translation:
it is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the puppies. But she answered and said to Him, "Yes, Lord, but even the puppies under the table feed on the children's crumbs"
You get the picture, right? Kids feeding the pet dog under the table? It's a lot less harsh.
I gather (same source) that some preachers want to imagine that Jesus learned a valuable lesson about racism from the woman's faith, i.e. Gentiles are just as good as Jews.
Well, there's an extended story that Mark tells earlier, from Mark 4:35-5:43. Jesus tells His disciples to head to the other side of the lake. A storm scares them half to death and nigh sinks the boat. On the other side they meet a demon-possessed pagan, whom Jesus exorcises and sends home with the mission to tell everyone about what God did for him. AFAIK, this is the first apostle whom Jesus commissioned. Jesus cared enough about this (pagan) man and his subsequent mission that travel, scaring His (jewish) disciples silly, the fate of a herd of pigs, and even the temporary death of Jairus' (jewish) daughter were secondary.
That sounds like He had very different priorities than I would have, but they're certainly not bigoted.
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