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As Kafal says, the Dog People have always kept slaves. Usually slaves were boys or young women captured from enemy tribes, or from Wagaibe settlements. The best slaves were boys or girls between the ages of about 8 and 12--old enough to take care of themselves, but young enough to be indoctrinated into the ways of the tribe.
The setnu (tribes) of the Dog People are really more like war societies, and membership is not hereditary. All members of the setnu are spiritual relatives whether or not they are actually related. Children born into the tribe are formally adopted shortly after birth; until this is done, they are not considered kin. Marriage is exogamous (i.e. outside the setnu) but it is possible to marry someone who has lived in your own setnu, even been born into it, if they have not been adopted--such as slaves.
Slaves, therefore, are usually taken in with the expectation that they will eventually become members of the tribe. At any given time, a typical setnu has several non-members living in it--either slaves, or poor relatives who came along with a woman getting married (a common practice).
Slave women are considered sexual fair game for all the men in the tribe. Having sex with a slave isn't infidelity. In fact, since Dog People men are formally married when the girl is quite young (usually 10 or 11) but the two are supposed to be chaperoned until she matures physically, the slave women provide a necessary sexual outlet for young married men. On the other hand, the slave women are not powerless, since they have good prospects of becoming members of the tribe someday. It's in the men's best interest to treat them well. Certainly abuse does occur, and some young men consider it good sport to rape (but not otherwise harm) women from other setnu and then let them go back to their husbands--counting sexual coup, as it were.
The Tolshay Kahn, however, have changed all this by introducing the idea of slavery as an economic commodity. Now the Raven's Children are taking as many slaves as they can--old, young, male, female, it doesn't matter, though usually the slaves are children or young women because they're easier to control. These particular girls are old enough that they probably have husbands and kids already, which was generally not done in the past since you'd want to keep these women around and didn't want irate kinfolks trying to take them back. But now, the slaves are just passing through. There's nothing to stop their keepers from treating them poorly.