Why It's Not That Easy for Dogs to Live With Us

Source: Edgar Daniel Hernández Cervantes/Pexels

The complexity and ambiguity of dog-human relationships is a "hot" topic that is of interest to a wide range of researchers, trainers, and canine guardians who choose to live with these domesticated beings, many of whom often live as captive animals with little to no freedom to choose what they want to do or consent to what they're asked to do in their daily lives. While there can be large differences in the lifestyles of "homed" dogs and free-ranging and feral individuals, humans still exert a lot of control over their lives. In fact, Dr. Mariam Motamedi Fraser wonders whether it's natural for dogs to belong to us and dog expert Dr. Marco Adda calls for a significant change in how dogs are viewed and trained.

A new book by Dr. Erika Cudworth called Animal Entanglements: Muddied Living in Dog–Human Worlds focuses on how difficult it can be for dogs to adapt to, and have high-quality lives in, a human-dominated world. She shows that dogs are not our best friends, nor are they unconditional lovers—two highly overused and misleading characterizations that often appear in academic and popular media. Erika's well-written and most important book deserves a global audience because when we value the lives of every single individual dog, we also are helping ourselves come to the realization that it is a panoply of shared emotions that function as social glue that draws them to us and us to them.

Source: Roman & Littlefield, used with permission

Marc Bekoff: Why did you write Animal Entanglements?

Erika Cudworth: As a child, most of my family and family friends lived with dogs and I have wanted to live with dogs throughout my life. I had my first "adult dog" in my early 30s and my partner and I worked full-time. This led me to realise darker aspects of dog lives as human companions and how much juggling is involved in trying to live with a dog well, and minimise the time they are alone, captive in the "home." Kevin the Jack Russell terrier came to me literally, over the fence, from a neighbour who was fed up with him and this well-illustrated how precarious dog lives are. Animal Entanglements was inspired by walking with Kevin, the people and dogs we met, and the stories shared while walking. The book is framed by the difficulties for dogs being human companions while also trying to show how humans and dogs negotiate their lives and relationships in more positive ways.

MB: Who do you hope to reach in your interesting and important book?

EC: There are two scholarly audiences. I hope to show the relevance of a sociological lens in thinking through everyday lives with dog companions for non-sociologists in the field of animal studies. I’m also targeting mainstream sociology and social science more broadly, showing how the theories and concepts we use can help us to understand the significant social phenomenon of humans living with other creatures as companions. Those living with dogs (cats, and perhaps other animals) will recognise some of the stories people shared with me in the research. A friend of mine says I am lucky to have the opportunity to write something "normal people" (that is, beyond the academy!) would find interesting. I hope that is true.

MB: What are some of the major topics you consider?

EC: This book wants to show how sociology helps understand people's lives with dog companions, and a sociological field or concept underpins the different chapters. The introduction is theoretical and thinks through human relations with other animals, particularly dogs. The first chapter considers what studying relations with other species means for social science methodology, and the challenges of researching on and with dog companions. I then look at the routine practice of walking with dogs, and challenge sociological notions of community as human-only, by arguing that dogs and people generate community through walking in public space and challenge the idea of an exclusively human home.

Dogs do not just "fit in" to a space made by humans, although there are pressures on them to do so. Ingenious and tenacious as they are, dogs change the space of home and are active in building what we think of as home. Dogs are often left alone when their people are at work, and the impact of human work on human-dog lives is the subject of Chapter 6, which also revisits feminist ideas of care and caring labour, asking who is it who cares for whom, and how do they care, in the multispecies home. As well as a basic duty of care in walking dogs, humans are responsible for feeding them, and Chapter 4 contributes to the critical literature in the sociology of food, raising some uncomfortable questions about which animals eat other animals and why, in multispecies homes.

In some scholarship, particularly from U.S. social psychology, research participants and authors have used concepts of parenting to discuss and explain close relationships between people and animals. Some sociologists have also suggested dogs are family because they are furry children with "pet parents," although mainstream family sociology generally ignores animals. Chapter 5 suggests "kinship" may be more inclusive than "family" in thinking about inter-species personal and intimate relationships. My hope is that this might enable appreciation of dogs as adults of another species, contest popular cultural notions of "dog moms" and "fur babies," and encourage social scientists to take emotional attachments between people and animal companions more seriously.

MB: How does your book differ from others that are concerned with some of the same general topics?

EC: There is an emerging literature problematising the status of dog companions. While Animal Entanglements does this, there is also much optimism in the emphasis on relationality, shared everyday life and love, reflecting the influence of Donna Haraway’s When Species Meet on my thinking.

MB: Are you hopeful that as people learn more about the lives of dogs they will change their ways and offer their canine companions more freedoms to live their lives as dogs?

EC: I hope greater recognition of dogs as captives will promote radical rethinking of what people expect (and have the right to expect) from their relationships with dogs, and in turn, what our responsibilities are in living with dogs. This, ultimately, is the book’s conclusion. If we let dogs "be more dog" and become a little less humancentric in our relationships with them, all might benefit.

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