Recently I met a man while walking our beagle pup. We talked about dogs for a while, then he showed me the memorial tattoo on his forearm: “In Memory of Spotty.”
People are serious about their dogs. They spend an average of $137 monthly maintaining their animal (a low estimate). The pet industry significantly contributes to the US economy, to the tune of $260 billion in 2023. According to the American Veterinarian Medical Association, 64 million households (45 percent of all households) are home to 88 million dogs, and a Pew survey reports that an overwhelming percentage say their pets are part of their family.
In Korea dogs are still eaten, although the Korean parliament recently made eating dogs illegal, an indication of the growing influence of Western values. In France, especially in Paris, dogs may sit at restaurant tables. In the United States the nature of dogs has shifted from hunting and work animals to companion animals and most recently to “fur babies.”
Why is such lavish attention given to dogs, and why have they become an integral part in our lives? To answer this question, we need to understand social interaction, then highlight social forces that have come together to encourage the rise of pets as fur babies.
Social interaction is always inter-subjective, involving a sender and receiver, real or imagined, who thinks about others, judges them and imputes meanings to them. Conversation is a tool for interaction. Sometimes talk builds social relationships; other times, confusion and conflict result. Deborah Tannen has written about conversations in her books with titles such as “That's Not What I Mean,” “You Just Don't Understand,” and “I Only Say This Because I Love You.”
We use words and nonverbal clues to accomplish things in our social worlds. If we do or say something untoward and are called to account for it, we excuse or justify our action, with the goal of restoring relationships. People may honor or dishonor our attempts. We talk to influence the consequences of what we may say. We talk to win arguments, to get away with saying something we think might offend (a disclaimer), to ingratiate ourselves with others, establish status, and a host of other ways.
Obviously, dogs cannot have natural conversations with people. They are bred to be subservient to humans, with juvenile faces, and with chronic anxiety. For instance, separated from their litter before they discover their Alpha, they look for the Alpha at every encounter with dog or human. We call that excited behavior a “friendly greeting,” without being corrected by the dog.
People give voice to their animals; they fill in what they think the dog might say and feel. Franz Kafka used a dog's voice to investigate problems and paradoxes in and about society in a 1922 book, “Investigation of a Dog.” This dog tediously analyzes his experiences using reasons and science, and reaches a pessimistic conclusion about the state of society after World War I.
W. Bruce Cameron's “A Dog's Purpose” tells an incredulous story of a dog's reincarnations to serve different human purposes, ending with an emotional reunion with his first person. Thoroughly anthropomorphized, the movie version of his book made people both weep with sadness and with delight. Of course, all attempts to capture a dog's perspective are human and impervious to criticism from the dog.
The study of dogs has taught us that during 14,000 years of companionship and selective breeding, humans have created the modern dog (see “The Modern Dog” by Stanley Coren) to be docile, intelligent, and somewhat neurotic. Opinions vary about whether dogs have a sense of self and recognize human emotions. But we know they can learn a large number of words and retrieve objects by name. They can be taught to identify certain cancers from a specimen. As our knowledge about them grows, we use our talking skills to make the dog what we want.
If you walk your dog on a summer morning, you'll meet the dog community: people who share a love of their pets and are open to building reciprocal relationships that might lead to caring for each other's animals. Some people may do the opposite, isolating from others with their dog. And not all neighbors tolerate barking or dog droppings. One “solution” to this wicked problem is wrapping this recyclable matter in a plastic bag that preserves it in a landfill for 1,000 years.
European royalty developed close ties with dogs. The story of Josephine and her pug is a case in point. After their marriage, Napoleon discovered that Josephine already had a bed partner: Fortune the pug, who barked at all men. Supposedly, Fortune bit the great general on their wedding night. Later, when Napoleon was away at war, Josephine took a lover, Lt. Hippolyte Charles, a fact Fortune revealed when he did not bark at Lieutenant Charles. In that era, peasants kept working dogs for herding or hunting, not for pets.
In the U.S., people get dogs for all kinds of reasons: for companionship, for security, for hunting, to lead the blind or sense oncoming seizures, or for herding. Close relationships with dogs span all level of socio-economics, and there are hierarchies of status among types of dog. For example, a mixed breed rescued from the Humane Society does not rank as highly in the U.S. as an expensive pedigreed breed trained to be a show dog, but they may equally loved.
Social forces contribute to how we think about and live with dogs. Being able to afford to treat a dog like a family member is perhaps the No. 1 reason. The average household spends $367 yearly on veterinarian costs alone, not counting food and doggie stuff.
Most importantly, the quality of our human relationships affects the way we think about our dogs. We have fewer human confidants than just a few decades ago, and most of us live in sequestered, homogeneous neighborhoods. Our daily lives are mostly characterized by superficial and calculated contacts with others. We become bored and disenchanted by our routines, and the lack of trust in strangers and social institutions shape our overall happiness (the U.S. ranks 23th in happiness, according to the World Population Review).
Perhaps, as interactions with humans become more difficult and distorted, the meanings we give to our relationships with dogs will allow us to escape even more from difficulties in society. Dogs become surrogate friends with the qualities we wish human beings had.
How we act towards and communicate with dogs rest on a set of assumptions about why dogs do what they do. We freely imagine they love us, are loyal to us, and act on our behalf. What makes possible our interpretations of dogs is that they can't challenge our assumptions or engage in conversation. We think we know what they know and feel, but this is just a fiction, or even a delusion. Of all the delusions that give meaning to life, the modern dog concept can give us some of the greatest joy and escape from a troubled world. And our fur babies often get a pretty good deal, as well.
Jeff Nash is former chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
