robins1991

Robins, Douglas M., Clinton R. Sanders, and Spencer E. Cahill. 1991. Dogs and their people: Pet-facilitated interaction in a public setting. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 20(1): 3-25.

People in public normally engage in “civil inattention” in which they make minimal eye contact with others and then avoid any further interaction. This behavior can be safely breached, however, in the presence of “open” others, such as dogs, kids, or other similarities or “badges” (same make of car, etc.). Dogs, then, “facilitate interaction among the unacquainted” (4), and thus serve as an “antidote for the human anonymity of the public places of our contemporary society” (23). To study how this process works, the authors undertook an ethnography of a group of dog owners who gathered regularly at a West Coast urban park.

Participants in the dog play group can be divided into regulars and outsiders. When an unfamiliar owner and dog approached the group of regulars, a specific process took place to gradually test and then include the outsider in the group. A regular would approach an owner-and-dog pair who were watching the group and speak to the dog in order to engage the owner in some conversation and invite her/him to let the dog loose with the others. The dog thus serves as a “bridging device” (9) through which interaction between people could safely begin. Conversation was limited to dog-related matters, and when newcomers tried to discuss more personal information (including people's names--only dog's names were exchanged early on), regulars would change the subject or leave. The behavior of a newcomer's dog was watched closely to ensure that the dog got along with the regular dogs in the group. During the course of several weeks, the newcomer is in a probationary state. All conversations are still about dogs. The newcomer is judged during this time by the way s/he deals with trouble among the dogs (such as a dog straying, picking fights, bothering other park visitors, or going in the mud). Owners were required to “restore both behavioral and moral order” (15) when any such trouble occurred by retrieving their dogs from the problem and providing explanations/excuses for the dog's behavior. Owners who did not take proper care of their trouble-causing dogs were ostracized by the group of regulars until they no longer returned or began to abide by the “rules.” After a longer period of time (5 weeks for the field researcher) regulars begin introducing themselves more personally to the newcomer who has now gained the status of a regular. Names, occupations, and details about personal lives begin to be exchanged, and owners offer greetings to owners by name now, instead of simply speaking to the dogs.

The presence of a dog, considered to open up a person to public interaction, and serving as a badge of similar interest with others (dog-lovers) thus served as a way for people to make connections with other people in a gradual and careful way. Observing the owner's interaction with her/his dog and with trouble situations helped people to judge the person as worthy (or not) of further interaction. The dogs' presence provided safe discussion topics for initial encounters. Dogs, in sum, serve not only as companions themselves, but as ways for humans to meet other human companions.

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