Domestic Animals, Humans, and Leisure

The Dog Fancy refers to the practice of breeding, showing and training dogs for both conformation dog shows and for dog sports such as agility and obedience. The American Kennel Club (AKC) frames these endeavours as opportunities for people to engage in fun and enjoyable activities with their dogs. For example, it describes Conformation dog showing as a pleasurable activity “that will bring many hours of enjoyment and education to every member of your family” (AKC 2016a). It states that agility – an athletic event wherein a dog-human team must navigate an obstacle course for time – is “a great form of exercise for both dog and handler and a fun way to bond” (AKC 2016b). It goes on to suggest that agility training itself is a gratifying activity that often leads to participation in competitive events: “And you don’t have to compete to enjoy agility. Taking an agility class offers many other benefits. But many people start the sport just for fun, only to get bitten by the agility bug and become lifelong competitors!” (AKC 2016b).

While training and showing dogs can be entertaining activities, rarely are the structures and processes underlying these activities questioned. Social and cultural assumptions about the human-canine relationship exist that justify the use of the canine body and mind for entertainment. One such assumption is the notion that human animals always know better, and always have the power in the relationship. The power, for example, to decide what is good behaviour and what is not. This kind of power and control is clearly evidenced in the context of training, whether for basic manners or canine competitions. Another assumption espouses the view that the dog bodies that have the most value are those that are judged to be “beautiful” or determined to be “able-bodied.” These assumptions reinforce human control and dominance over canines and lead to the manipulation, modification and regulation of their minds and bodies. They reify social and cultural constructions of beauty as well as perpetuate views that marginalise groups of nonhuman animals on the basis of their body shape and type and their abilities to successfully perform certain mental and physical tasks. Examining American Kennel Club breed standards and literature about how to train, breed and show dogs in both conformation and dog sports, I explicate the ways that the dog fancy contributes to canine exploitation and suffering.

Dog training: literature and practice

Dog training literature since the late twentieth century generally describes dogs as emotional beings that deserve respect and love. It emphasises the importance of understanding canine behaviour, focussing on the way dogs use calming signals and body language to communicate with one another and with their human companions. This literature also advocates for positive reinforcement rather than coercion for getting dogs to perform a variety of functions, including obeying house rules, doing dog sports, aiding the disabled and performing search and rescue operations. Contemporary dog training literature, then, emphasises the importance of cultivating a relationship with one’s canine partner – one based on trust, integrity and understanding. Unfortunately, the literature does little to interrogate the hierarchical power dynamics that privilege humans over canines and thereby leaves intact a paradigm that allows for exploitation. While literature advocating positive reinforcement training, building relationships with canine companions and understanding canine ethology has done much to improve human-canine interactions, it has not contributed to a sustained critique of animal use that allows for the abuse of dogs in underground dogfighting rings, the existence of commercial dog breeding facilities (puppy mills) that operate with government sanction and the presence of millions of unwanted dogs languishing in shelters every year. Of course, dog training literature and methods are not directly responsible for these injustices, but they do not challenge them and thus conform to a view that nonhuman animal bodies (dog bodies) are objects to be used and exploited for work, entertainment and human-like companionship, and then discarded when they fail in these endeavours.

The dog training method most commonly practised in the early twentieth century up through the 1980s was compulsion training. Compulsion training is a method that “uses positive punishment, such as leash corrections, and negative reinforcement, such as ear pinches or an electric collar. The trainer manipulates the dog into a position by using physical placement or training equipment” (Family Pet 2013). In this method, when the dog performs the behaviour properly, the handler eliminates the discomfort applied to her. So, for example, if a trainer wants a dog to sit then he pulls up on a leash attached to a choke chain until the dog sits after which the choke is released. The most well-known representative of this type of training is the Koehler (1976) method (a method still used by some trainers today).

The 1980s also saw the concept of “dominance” appear – this came from research on wolves. Ethologists discovered that wolf packs adhere to strict hierarchies with clear leaders that dominate the other wolves in order to maintain pack cohesion. Research indicated that wolves that did not follow the rules were often disciplined by the “alpha” wolf, who occasionally used physical force to get the miscreants to submit to his authority (Steinhart 1995). In dog training, it became the norm to talk about the need for humans in dog-human packs to become alphas and thus dominate their dogs in order to gain their respect – only in this way, it was argued, could one get a dog to reliably do what was asked of him (The Monks of New Skete 2002). As a result of this emphasis on dominance, such practices as the “alpha roll” appeared, a technique in which one forcibly turns a dog onto his back and pins him to the ground until he submits to human authority and control by relaxing his body (76).

In the 1990s, trainers began to recognise that many dogs respond very poorly to compulsion training and alpha rolls. The language of “dominance” changes to the language of “leadership” and an emphasis on classical conditioning, positive reinforcement and marker training becomes common. The result of this change in training philosophy is the appearance of less coercive training methods which emphasise reward for desirable behaviour rather than punishment for undesirable behaviour. Here I will focus on this type of training philosophy for I see it as still contributing to a paradigm of dominance and control that ultimately causes suffering. While there are many well-known dog trainers who have authored books that encourage the use of positive reinforcement, I will focus on the work of Vicki Hearne and Patricia McConnell, both of whom are very well-known and respected dog trainers and authors.

Vicki Hearne was a writer, poet, professor and animal trainer. She trained dogs and horses for 25 years. In the course of her work with dogs, she taught basic manners classes as well as competition classes – that is, classes that teach people how to prepare their dogs for a variety of dog sports, including obedience and agility. She has written several books that explain her training methods and philosophy. Perhaps the most important of which is her book Adam’s Task (Hearne 2007) wherein she argues that animals, particularly those with whom humans often share their lives, are highly intelligent, able to cultivate a sense of “the good” which influences their intentions and behaviours, and can enter into meaningful and reciprocal relationships with human beings. Though she has been credited for developing a unique training method, she is deeply indebted to the Koehler (1976) method of dog training.

Patricia McConnell is an adjunct professor of Zoology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a certified Applied Animal Behaviourist. She is a prolific writer who specialises in family dog training and treating aggression in dogs. She gives seminars about various issues related to dog training, has made a number of training videos and has written numerous training booklets and two very popular books – The Other End of the Leash: What We Do Around Dogs (2003) and For the Love of a Dog: Understanding Emotion in You and Your Best Friend (2006).

On anthropomorphism

Both authors/trainers have worked hard to correct views that interfere with people’s ability to understand how companion animals engage their worlds. One concept that they address is anthropomorphism. McConnell and Hearne rightly point out that anthropomorphism has both a positive and negative side. On the one hand it is a type of exploitation, a means by which human animals appropriate nonhuman animals for their own purposes. For instance, people often use their canine and feline companions to satisfy their emotional desires; they refer to dogs and cats as their children and often expect them to provide the kind of emotional support and understanding that they need from other humans (Serpell 2005; McKenna 2013). About this kind of anthropomorphism, Patricia McConnell writes:

Such attitudes and practices are problematic because they betray a lack of recognition and therefore respect for the very real differences between human and nonhuman animals. Philosopher Erin McKenna notes that

Dogs, McConnell would argue, are marvellous, wonderful living beings because they are dogs, not because they are humans with four legs. She seems to suggest that treating dogs as humans can cause them pain and suffering. Animal rights activist and scholar, Karen Davis, in her article “Procrustean Solutions to Animal Identity and Welfare Problems,” contends that “in vivisection … the victim is also involuntarily made to appear as an aspect of the victimizer’s identity, as when scientists call animals used in vivisection experiments ‘partners’ and ‘collaborators’ in the quest for knowledge” (2011, 44). The very real suffering that nonhuman animals experience in scientific research is masked by language that suggests they are colleagues in these pursuits – that they choose to undergo these painful experiments to aid the researcher in his/her search for “truth.”

Similarly, when we regard dogs as humans, we erase their canine identities, applying human characteristics and desires instead – attributes that are completely irrelevant to their health and wellbeing. In other words, if we think or act as if dogs are four-legged human beings, we run the risk of ignoring (or, perhaps more accurately, not even recognising) their needs as canines. The act of shaping dogs’ dispositions in the image of our own, then, is a kind of vivisection – a dissection, manipulation and reconfiguration of their natures according to our emotional and physical needs and goals.

While much dog training literature acknowledges the problems with ignoring important differences between humans and canines, it also recognises that we share much in common with them. From its title we can see that Patricia McConnell’s book For the Love of a Dog: Understanding Emotion in You and Your Best Friend is about how dogs have many of the same emotions as humans do and express them in very comparable ways. For example, we learn from McConnell that dogs often communicate what they desire or need through facial expression, body language and vocal intonation (2006). Indeed, humans can understand these physical cues and what they mean because they express the same kinds of emotions in homologous ways. For example, a person knows that a dog has experienced pain when he cries out after stepping on a sharp object because humans also cry out when feeling pain like this. Similarly, human beings can recognise emotional states like anger in nonhuman animals from their faces. According to McConnell, “the face of an angry dog resembles the face of an angry human” (2006, 175). She continues by having readers conduct a kind of thought experiment. She says “Imagine being five years old again, and make an angry face right now…. You’ll find that your mouth is closed, your lips pushed forward, and your eyebrows move together and downward. You can see a similar expression on the face of a confident dog warning that she’s about to bite” (175). Thus, both humans and canines express rage with furrowed brow, the baring of teeth in an “offensive pucker” (lips forward, mouth open), tension in the cheek area and wrinkles on the bridge of the human nose and the canine rostrum. Again, humans can easily recognise this emotion in dogs because it manifests somatically in ways analogous to their own. From this example and others that McConnell describes in her book, we learn that the emotional lives of humans share much in common with those of nonhuman animals – a fact confirmed by work in evolutionary biology that has demonstrated the physiological, anatomical and genetic continuity between human and nonhuman animals (Bekoff 2007; Bekoff and Pierce 2009). In her work, Patricia McConnell regularly invokes evolutionary biology, ethology and work done by animal behaviourists to point out the similarities between humans and canines.

In this way, McConnell recognises that a certain kind of anthropomorphism is acceptable – in fact necessary for understanding dogs. Vicki Hearne, for her part, lauds the animal trainer for using anthropomorphic language when talking about nonhuman animals and criticises academics for failing to do so. Hearne writes,

By making such a comparison, Hearne suggests that disallowing the possibility that nonhuman animals feel emotions similar to humans indicates that academics are privileging the human species undeservedly. Currently there are a number of scholars who recognise that nonhuman animals indeed express emotions similar to human animals. For example, Marc Bekoff, Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, has written about emotions in nonhuman animals. About love and courtship in canids, he says “(i)n many canids – that is, members of the dog family, which includes wolves, coyotes, foxes, jackals, and dingoes – males and females who have mated for years still greet one another like they’re long-lost friends and court vigorously, even though they’ve done it before” (2007, 71). Moreover, primatologist Frans de Waal has written extensively on empathy in nonhuman animals (see de Waal 2008 for instance). Nevertheless, Hearne argues that the tendency to privilege human animals based on the ability to express emotion persists.

The work of Vicki Hearne and Patricia McConnell also professes to teach us how to read the body language of dogs that is not homologous with our own. They discuss what it means when a dog’s tail is sticking straight up, when it is wagging, and when it is stuck between the legs as well as what ear positioning suggests (are the ears back, sticking straight up etc.). They indicate how to recognise certain actions as calming signals – the blinking of the eyes, the licking of the lips, yawning and turning the head, for example. McConnell even asks readers to become “field biologists,” “making thoughtful, detailed descriptions” of their dogs’ behaviour (2006, 29).

All of this, the authors of these texts hope, will help humans communicate better with their canine companions. Contemporary dog training literature then has come a long way in helping readers engender the condition that Karen Davis has called empathic anthropomorphism “in which a person’s vicarious perceptions and emotions are rooted in the realities of evolutionary kinship with other animal species, in a spirit of good will toward them” (2011, 47). Knowing about dog behaviour and body language and understanding how we as a species share much in common with dogs in the way we express and experience our emotions allows us ultimately to act in kinder, more compassionate ways towards our canine companions and to respond appropriately to their needs.

On human-canine relationships

Finally, both Hearne and McConnell have done much to advance the notion that in order to live comfortably with our canine companions, we have to develop thoughtful and trusting relationships with them. Vicki Hearne was one of the first to talk about this idea. She criticises the behaviourist who studies animal behaviour in the laboratory because they do not allow that the animals under study can think, intend, believe or emote (2007, 58). She contends that teaching commands like “sit” requires a great deal of conceptual work on the part of both handler and dog. This work can only take place if there is a relationship between them. In other words, a dog can only understand what “sit” means if her person teaches her what it means; the presence of learning and teaching requires precise and clear communication and the existence of real communication implies a relationship. But communication and relationships are reciprocal. The dog must be able to communicate with the handler, just as the handler does with the dog. If the dog understands clearly what “sit” means, she can use it to communicate with her person (56).

Hearne believes strongly that dogs have intentions, make conscious decisions and communicate meaning. Moreover, she believes that it is the language of training that allows communication between human and canine to take place. In Patricia McConnell’s work we likewise see a strong emphasis on relationship-building. She regards her efforts to elucidate canine behaviour as a means to improve communication between dogs and people, and in the introduction of her book, For the Love of a Dog, she remarks that she focuses on the emotions that are most relevant to dog-human relationships: namely fear, anger, joy and love. About her book, she asserts that

Here, McConnell clearly recognises the reciprocal nature of the dog-human relationship.

Hearne and McConnell (as well as others) have done much to deconstruct the anthropocentric emphasis in the dog-human relationship. As I have pointed out above, their work underscores the importance of ethology, validates the similarities and differences between the species and entreats readers to develop deep and meaningful relationships with their dogs. In doing so, they intend to move us away from using overly coercive – even violent – systems of training. Thus, we might argue that their work in essence has amounted to a paradigm shift in the way humans work with canines.

Unfortunately, this is not the case because in fact there has been no substantive challenge to the underlying assumption that human animals are in control. Advocating for humane treatment, building connections and being sensitive to the emotional states of dogs do not obviate the reality that humans are making the rules about what dogs can and cannot do and are defining the parameters of what is an acceptable and unacceptable relationship. Dogs still must fit into human society, communities and families with little autonomy relative to human members of these social groups. Human hegemony is preserved despite compassionate training methods and positive relationships.

Human hegemony in dog training

Vicki Hearne, following William Koehler (1976) (of the Koehler method of dog training), insists that dogs have the right to the consequences of their actions. In other words, if they do something correctly they should be rewarded, but if they do something incorrectly they should be punished. Dogs of course must learn what is expected, but once they know then they get rewarded for adhering to the rules and punished for not (2007). This might seem reasonable, but the implication, here, is that people who share their lives with dogs define what is correct and incorrect behaviour. They establish what behaviours are appropriate and which ones are inappropriate. This is a relationship of dominance and control – in such a context a dog’s independence and individuality is not recognised or respected and her ability to choose is severely truncated; that is, when told to “sit” the choice is to “sit” or suffer the consequences for not sitting so really there is only one acceptable choice.

Reflecting on the American legal system, comparative philosopher Jin Park writes

Park points out that this two-sided nature of the legal system allows for its misuse which she argues is not completely fixed through creation of a better law (2015). Dog training systems operate in similar ways. Any system that defines what an obedient dog is and does assigns roles to all the actors: the human is the leader and the dog is the subordinate. The human rewards desirable behaviour and punishes (or at least withholds reward for) undesirable behaviour. This is the way one prevents unruly conduct (the house being soiled, property chewed up and hands bitten) or gets a dog to perform a desirable task (run through the weave polls or heel in place at one’s side). Unfortunately, just as the law legitimises violence to keep order so too do dog training systems, which at times justify violence when a dog’s conduct needs to be changed or controlled. Systems that establish this power differential always have the potential for this kind of cruelty – those that have authority can and do abuse their position which often results in tyrannical action. For instance, to stop her dogs from digging holes in her yard, Vicki Hearne fills the holes with water and shoves her dogs’ heads in it. She finds this acceptable because it has the desired result – it prevents the dogs from digging holes in her yard. But clearly this is violence and a violence that she does not recognise. In fact, she justifies it:

I would argue that she is wrong here – this has everything to do with both punishment and authority and it is cruel.

We find this attitude and approach in other contexts as well. For competition training, it is increasingly common for handlers to use deprivation techniques when preparing a dog for performance events like agility or obedience trials. For example, a trainer might withhold a meal when a dog fails to perform a task correctly. That is, if the dog is being asked to heel for her food and she makes a mistake then she will not be fed right away. If she continues to make the mistake she may not get fed at all for that meal. In some cases, this can go on for more than a day (Fenzi 2012). Supporters suggest this approach has two benefits: firstly, not receiving the expected meal indicates to the dog that she did something wrong, and secondly, the hunger experienced serves to increase motivation for doing the task properly the next time. Handlers dismiss any question regarding the ethics of such a method by pointing to its effectiveness in helping them obtain the desired behaviour. Depriving dogs of basic life requirements, then, is justified primarily as a means for success in the performance ring: “(p)roponents [of deprivation training] argue that these dogs must receive all good things through work, lest they decide that work isn’t very interesting if any other options are available” (Fenzi 2012, np). The immediate problem here is that the burden of responsibility falls completely on the dog, and the handler’s efforts to communicate with her dog are not interrogated. Denise Fenzi, a well-known and well-respected competition obedience trainer, makes this point very clearly when she writes:

The underlying problem, however, that allows this kind of training method to persist is the perception that the dog is nothing more than a tool to be used to obtain a desired end – namely a successful run at a trial. In essence, the performance dog has no inherent value – her individuality and personality, and thus her desires and needs are in and of themselves irrelevant; she becomes an object or commodity to be exploited for human entertainment, prestige and recognition.

Park (2015) argues that this happens because of the fundamental nature of institutions (and I am regarding dog training and the kinds of relationships between humans and dogs it promotes as a system or institution). She writes:

The ways of interacting with and training dogs promoted in most dog training literature do not allow them to have their own opinions about what they should and should not do – to have their own perspectives as Park mentions. Instead, they consolidate power and control in the hands of human beings which unfortunately can result in them engaging in aggressive and destructive relationships with their canine companions.

Breeding and conformation

The American Kennel Club (AKC), the most well-known and respected registry for purebred dog pedigrees in the USA, supports and sanctions conformation dog shows (in the UK it is The Kennel Club; much of what follows applies to The Kennel Club as well). In these shows, judges assess the appearance and temperament of individual dogs according to standards written by breed clubs and endorsed by the AKC. These standards are a set of aesthetic criteria that describes in detail the ideal physical type for each breed. While they also describe the ideal temperament, the standards privilege physical appearance and ignore a dog’s personality traits that form her distinctive character (Carr 2014). Each dog, then, is treated more as an object, than as a sentient being with a unique emotional life and psychological disposition. This objectification of dog bodies is strengthened by language found in the standards, such as the tendency to refer to dogs as “specimens”. For example, in the section that addresses how the coat should look in the standard for the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, one can read the following: “Coat: Of moderate length, silky, free from curl. Slight wave permissible…. Specimens where the coat has been altered by trimming, clipping or by artificial means shall be so severely penalized as to be effectively eliminated from competition” (AKC 1995). The “dog as specimen,” reinforced by the fact that dogs in shows are referred to not by names but by numbers, becomes a representation of the breed that is valuable primarily for her contribution to a breeding programme that strives to produce canine bodies that exemplify the ideal body type. In addition to “specimen,” words and phrases used in breeding and dog showing discourse such as “true to type” (showing desired breed characteristics), “linebreeding” (breeding of close relatives) and “an outcrossing” (breeding two dogs from different lines) as well as terms for father and mother like “sire” and “dam” further depersonalise individual dogs (Library Index 2016). They reinforce the perception that canine bodies are “things” that can be manipulated to create the perfect appearance as well as purchased and sold for profit. Breeding and conformation showing make individual dogs into abstract entities, mere embodiments of their breed.

The pursuit of the perfect canine body is concomitant with the Victorian era interest in eugenics and obsession with racial superiority. In his article, “The End of Identity Politics: On Disability as an Unstable Category,” Lennard Davis (2013) points out that conceptions of race, gender and sexuality have their origins in the mid-nineteenth century, corresponding with both an interest in the scientific study of humans and the desire to create the “perfect” human – a desire that later became codified in the “field” of eugenics (266). Eugenics discourse encouraged the reproduction of people with desirable and inheritable mental and physical traits and discouraged and/or prevented the reproduction of people with undesirable, inheritable traits:

These groups, classified as mentally and physically deficient and understood according to a narrative of disability, needed to be managed and controlled. Eugenics was one way to accomplish this. Thus, oppressive practices, Davis argues, “were given scientific license through these medicalized, scientificized discourses” (2013, 266).

Canine breed classifications along with the first conformation dog shows of the modern era have their origins in the mid-to-late nineteenth centuries in England – the same time that the categories of race, sex and gender are used to classify human animals (McHugh 2004). With the rise of the conformation dog show, the focus of breeding was placed on a dog’s physical appearance not on her behaviour or ability to perform certain tasks; that is, breeders began breeding dogs primarily to satisfy particular aesthetic criteria: “(b)ut their commitment to dog showing, which is often the breeders’ primary objective and has become the chief means of regulating human interventions in dog breeding worldwide, exacerbates this problem of privileging appearance” (2004, 62).

The American Kennel Club states that the purpose of conformation dog shows “is to evaluate breeding stock” because the “dog’s conformation – his overall appearance and structure – is an indication of the dog’s ability to produce quality purebred puppies” (AKC 2016a). Genetic control of canine bodies is central to the creation of the ideal “breeding stock.” Such genetic control is maintained and recorded in the construction of pedigrees that keep track of a dog’s bloodlines. Knowing about the lineages of the dogs in one’s breeding programme allows the breeder to make informed choices about potential mates that will ideally improve her breeding lines. For example, if the dogs in a breeder’s kennels continue to produce puppies that have ears set too far forward on the head, the breeder will choose a mate that will correct this issue. In this way, the problem will be “fixed” in at least some of the puppies produced from the breeding. The practice of inbreeding or linebreeding serves a similar purpose: to pass on certain ideal physical features found in the parents or other close relatives to the puppies. Here, then, the improvement of the breeding programme is the priority and not the wellbeing or desires of individual dogs. In fact, dogs in breeding programmes have no control over their reproductive lives. Females in season are placed with males whether they want to breed or not and in some cases breeders will use physical force to hold the female in place while the male penetrates her (Dunayer 2001). In other cases, the male partner is eliminated altogether and instead a particularly invasive form of artificial insemination is used wherein a female is penetrated (again without any possibility of expressing consent or refusal) by “a long plastic or glass tube” during which “[a]ttempts are made to at least reach the level of her cervix which in large dogs may be several inches inside the animal” (Foster 2016).

Through genetic manipulation, various breeds of dog have been created out of the desire to produce “beautiful” animals. Because breeders control their health, physical characteristics and ability to reproduce, show dogs are literally engineered to produce a “beautiful body” that satisfies an aesthetic ideal. They are taken out of the context of their own reality and denied their own identity (Carr 2014). In this way, they are transformed into nothing more than fetishised art objects that represent and demonstrate human supremacy. Domination over living beings like this disempowers them, robbing them of agency, making them powerless over their own bodies. Such a relationship derives from a fascist discourse wherein those who have power completely control the lives and bodies of those who do not. Absolute power like this prevents breeders from turning a critical eye on their practices and instead allows them to engage in morally questionable breeding practices and, for some dogs, the willful mutilation of their bodies.

Many AKC standards encourage body modifications or cosmetic surgeries like ear cropping and tail docking – practices that have little to do with the ability of a dog to produce healthy representatives of the breed. Quite the contrary, ear cropping and tail docking are used primarily to shape a dog’s body to produce a certain look that a breeder cannot get through breeding. Modifying a dog’s body, then, reinforces the perception that dogs are aesthetic objects that can be manipulated to satisfy human definitions of canine beauty. Though there are no year to year records regarding the numbers of dogs that have experienced this kind of cosmetic surgery, in her article entitled, “Cropping and Docking: A Discussion of the Controversy and the Role of Law in Preventing Unnecessary Cosmetic Surgery on Dogs,” Amy Broughton (2003) writes that in 2003 approximately 130,000 dogs experienced unnecessary cosmetic surgery in the USA. The American Kennel Club’s official position on these surgeries supports the continuation of their practice: “The American Kennel Club recognizes that ear cropping, tail docking, and dewclaw removal, as described in certain breed standards, are acceptable practices integral to defining and preserving breed characters and enhancing good health. Appropriate veterinary care should be provided” (AKC 2014). That this statement stresses the importance of these practices for “defining and preserving breed characters” only reinforces the point that body modifications are performed to maintain a particular corporal aesthetic for certain breeds (note that this section, “Breeding and Conformation” is more fully treated in Hurley 2017).

Conclusion

Up to this point, I have argued that dog training, dog sports, breeding and conformation showing promote the view that dog bodies are objects (like tools or art pieces) that can be manipulated for entertainment purposes or for satisfying aesthetic criteria that delineate a “beautiful specimen.” I have also argued that training literature and methods advocate – sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly – the view that dogs should submit to human hegemony – giving them limited (if any) opportunity to exercise agency over their own lives. Viewing dogs in this way leads to morally questionable training practices such as those associated with deprivation training or to the creation of breed standards and language about ideal body type that results in forced breeding and unnecessary cosmetic surgeries. Canines have been adversely affected by these discourses and practices because they objectify their bodies and take from them any sense of individuality, freedom and power.

While we need to interrogate and deconstruct practices like these that perpetuate suffering and exploitation, I do not think that we should stop living with dogs or interacting with them. We do, however, have to consider other ways of being in relationship with them (indeed, with nonhuman animals in general). We need to be open to the possibility that other ways of interacting with our dogs exist that are not based on hierarchy and control. Following philosopher and scholar Ralph Acampora, I would suggest that such a way is found in the common bodily experience of a shared life world (Acampora 2006).

In explicating what he means by corporal compassion, Acampora describes a concept he calls “symphysis” which he defines as a “somaaesthetic nexus experienced through a direct or systemic (inter)relationship” (2006, 76). It is symphysis that allows us to experience a shared life world with nonhuman animals – through our bodies, our senses – without colonising their consciousness. This is a kind of empathy but not, as Acampora points out, of the imaginative kind where we mentally visualise the self as other – where we become the other, taking on his/her identity and then … pretending to know the other’s suffering, develop a moral sentiment that drives us to alleviate suffering and strive to prevent it from happening again. Complete identification is impossible, not desirable, and not the way real empathy works: “(c)ultivating a bodiment ethos of interanimality is not a matter of mentally working one’s way into other selves or worlds by quasi-telepathic imagination, but is rather about becoming sensitive to an already constituted ‘inter-zone’ of somaesthetic conviviality” (Acampora 2006, 84). When a dog squeals because someone has stepped on its paw, we do not feel that pain the way the dog does – but we recognise it, flinch even in response to it because most of us have experienced a similar pain when someone has stepped on some part of our body. Acampora recognises that we share much in common with nonhuman animals. He writes, “(d)espite differences in some sensory modalities, members of various species retain enough somatic commonality to make sense of one another” (30).

But there is more. We also connect with other living beings in our experiences of certain ecological spaces. This can occur when we realise that we are experiencing the same climate or the same sounds (e.g. squirrel) as another animal like when we realise that during winter we don heavier clothing just as many nonhuman animals experience the thickening of their fur. In this way, we live together with nonhuman animals as neighbours because we share a similar space, a neighbourhood – like a patch of woods, park or city street. Sometimes these experiences, however, are recognised by both species as shared – as an experience between friends (those that live together). The idea of shared experience here is of key importance and it is this kind of interaction that needs to be reflected on when we consider alternative ways to engage other living beings – when we think about our life with dogs. Perhaps this is part of what Derrida’s story about his cat in The Animal That Therefore I Am intends. He writes of the mutual gaze – meeting his cat (and being met by him) eye to eye, and of the subsequent recognition in that moment that each one had of the other’s existence (Derrida 2008). No hierarchy, no domination, no control – equal in the recognition of the other. These experiences can happen with wild animals – when a deer for example meets one’s gaze during a walk in the woods. But even more profound is the recognition of a shared experience with those nonhuman companions with which we spend our lives – an experience that is mutual and not governed by the language of domination and control. The question is can we note these experiences, recognise them for what they are and allow them to provide the foundation for a new way of conceiving of human and nonhuman animal (canine) relationships.

If the answer to this question is yes (and I think this indeed is the answer), then it would change the way we understand how canines and humans experience leisure time together. Both Neil Carr (2014) and Marc Bekoff (Bekoff and Pierce 2009) have indicated that dogs do play and have fun. They engage playfully with other canines as well as other species like humans and felines. Taking Acampora’s notion of symphysis together with the understanding that canines enjoy playing with humans, we can and perhaps are ethically obligated to spend our leisure time playing together in such a way that minimises the power differential that privileges humans over canines. Surely, people showing dogs in dog shows or training them for sports like agility and obedience enjoy the activity. The question is whether such endeavours are pleasurable for the dogs involved. Are the dogs merely tools or objects in these activities (Carr 2014)? While surely it would be too facile to argue that dogs in every instance of human-dog interaction in these sports are regarded only as objects, I would, nevertheless, submit that these endeavours too easily lend themselves to the reification of hard and fast power distinctions between humans and canines as well as the idea that dogs are simply tools for human pleasure. Symphisis, instead, would insist on mutual interaction where the needs and desires of both human and canine are recognised – that both are equal participants in the game, walk or other activity, and each have the power to disengage if they so choose.

References

Acampora, Ralph. 2006. Corporal Compassion: Animal Ethics and Philosophy of Body. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

American Kennel Club. 1995. “Official Standard of the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel.” Accessed October 5, 2016. www.akc.org/dog-breeds/cavalier-king-charles-spaniel/.

American Kennel Club. 2014. “Summary Position Statements: Ear Cropping, Tail Docking, and Dew Claw Removal.” Accessed May 4, 2016. www.akc.org/government-relations/position-statements/.

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4 Dog showing and training

Enjoyable hobbies or destructive practices that reinforce speciesist ideologies?