On being a dog-person: Meaning-making & dog-walking identities

Abstract

This paper investigates the dog-walk as a sociologically significant site of inquiry, offering a reflective account of using walking-interviews to understand an intersubjectively-oriented construction of personal and social dog-walking identities. Taking a Human-Animal Studies perspective and drawing on data from fourteen interviews with dog-owners in Cork, this paper suggests that the dog-walk, although a mundane, daily activity, is a multifaceted and mutually meaningful practice. Reflecting on my use of walking-interviews, I explore the meanings that dog-owners ascribe to dog-walking, how it shapes their perception of self, and consider their construction of social identities as dog-people, hybridised beings comprising dog and owner, whose focus lies in issues of shared interest to such beings. I propose that mobile methods, such as walking-interviews, support enhanced epistemological and methodological insights into how being a dog-person is done.

Introduction

Over the past three years, I have walked and wandered with dog-walker-owners, in all weathers, to grasp what dog-walking means to them and understand how dog-walking serves as a conduit to the enactment of personal and social identity. Completed on a wet and windy morning, one interview, in particular, stands out not so much for the views expressed as for the torrential rain and easy contentment between the three of us – Anne, myself and George, her Jack Russell terrier -, a dog and two very wet ‘dog-people’:

I live in (names small seaside town) with George, a Jack Russell Terrier. He's a docile little guy who loves his walk. He has a number of health problems…and his eye acts up from time to time […] I live with dogs in their own right and not as a substitute for a human family. I can tell George he's after getting fat and he won't mind, and if he turns around and walks away, I don't mind.

My experiences with Anne and George, and other dog-walker-owners, raise questions about the meanings dog-owners ascribe to dog-walking, as well as seeking to understand how a hybridised identity as ‘dog-person’ is enacted, one that is ‘neither fully canine nor purely human’ (Włodarczyk, 2021:3).

This work is guided by a Human-Animal Studies’ theoretical perspective which takes as one of its central concerns the ways in which ‘animal lives intersect with human societies’ (DeMello, 2012: 4), and recognises the bi-directionality of causality in the human-animal relationship, that is, this research views animals as social agents or ‘minded interactants’ (Taylor, 2007: 60). This work is of conceptual significance to sociological debates as it challenges understandings of the ‘social’ in sociology as a human-only activity (Taylor, 2007). It explores the ‘animal challenge’ (Carter and Charles, 2018) to sociology, mindful of ‘sociology's fraught relationship with biology, its assumptions about human exceptionalism and its emergence in the context of industrialization and urbanization’ (79). It also specifically addresses sociological concerns such as identity and meaning (Sanders, 2000a). Drawing on debates at the intersection of New Walking Studies and Human-Animal relations, this paper explores the experience and meaning of dog-walking in dog-walkers’ lives, and how walking as a practice informs the construction of personal and social identities which recognise human-non-human interactions’ social nature. A final function of this work is to innovate and energise sociological methodologies via exploration and implementation of mobile methods. Reflecting on the experience of conducting 14 walking-interviews with dog-owners, it reflects on walking as a specific research method and identifies insights that can be gained from utilising mobile methods.

I begin by setting my research in the context of debates about human-animal relations, a relatively recent addition to the sociological field, in tandem with debates around personal and social identities as dog-person. I further locate this work with respect to conceptual explorations of walking as practice. This paper explores pedestrian mobile methods or go-alongs – walking-interviews as an efficient and invigorating method of mobile data collection. Core themes of this work include the ways in which dog-walkers speak about their dogs – and the dog-walk – in terms of identity, that is what it means to them and how it impacts health and wellbeing, social inclusion and belonging, and informs understandings of risk, threat and stereotyping. This work suggests that the nature of personal and social identity construction apparent here is informed directly by issues particular to the human-dog dyad: personal health and wellbeing; social inclusion; hybrid identities, families and communities; civic and social engagement; risk and threat; restrictive breed types and human and canine stereotypes.

Dog-walking in literature

New walking studies

This work is located at the intersection of literature on New Walking Studies (Lorimer, 2011) and Human-Animal Studies. New Walking Studies advocates for a critical awareness of the practice of walking, suggesting the walk be understood as ‘event’, the walker as ‘embodied agent’, and walking as ‘embodied act’ (Fletcher and Platt, 2016: 3). Explicitly situating their consideration of dog-walking within Lorimer’s (2011) account of ‘new walking studies’, Fletcher and Platt (2016: 3) embrace his four assumptions, seeing walks as a product of place, walking as part of everyday life, the walker as an embodied agent, and walkers as ‘wilful and artful’. While New Walking Studies’ re-conceptualisation of walking led to a flourishing of related academic explorations, it also generated criticism, often from its own practitioners.

Such critiques focus on a romanticisation of a kind of walking which is always transformational rather than modestly quotidian. Middleton (2010: 578) seeks to re-focus such debates towards a more mundane type of walking, critically highlighting Ingold's overt attention to the nineteenth century transformation of walking from mode of transport to ‘elite leisure activity strongly influenced by the wanderings of Romantic poets such as Wordsworth and Coleridge’. Horton et al. too (2014: 98) acknowledge a preoccupation with ‘wilful, activist, clever and self-evidently meaningful or remarkable forms of walking’. This always enlightened or transformative conceptualisation of walking, Middleton (2010: 578) argues regretfully, ‘dominates much current work concerning pedestrian practices.’

Focusing on Legat’s (2008: 3) claim that we come to comprehend the world by walking it, Fletcher and Platt (2016) here discern this kind of ‘romanticisation’ and, like Middleton (2010), acknowledge this as one of the criticisms levelled at New Walking Studies. More recently, O’Neill and Roberts (2020: 2-3) warn that, although walking has ‘sensate, kinaesthetic, and performative attributes that make it particularly insightful for…ethnographic…research, (it) is not to be privileged as a way of ‘knowing’.

A further critique is levelled by Heddon and Turner (2012: 224) who highlight an orthodoxy of walking tending towards an ‘individualistic, heroic, epic and transgressive…masculinist ideology’. They suggest that Romantic and Naturalist explorations of rural places, or avant-garde drifts through urban streets, which ‘presume a universal walker…uninflected by gender’ (226) where walkers are encouraged to leave ‘wife, mistress…’, present an ‘historically masculinist set of norms’ (226). It is suggested that such dominant orthodoxies marginalise certain walking practices – among them those enacted by women (Bernstein, 1960) and people with disabilities (Edwards and Maxwell, this volume, 2022). Moving away from this kind of epic discourse, Middleton (2010: 576) draws a focus to walking as ‘less remarkable, unspectacular’, examining the ‘unreported everyday experiences associated with walking’. Daily dog-walking is certainly less remarkable than Wordsworth's poetic wanderings, but no less meaningful for that.

Human-Animal studies

Given the ubiquity of dogs, and companion animals broadly, it is interesting that the social sciences have ‘only recently’ (Irvine, 2012: 126) been seen to consider non-human animals; indeed an increasingly open response to the ‘animal challenge’ (Carter and Charles, 2018) is illustrated by a number of key publications - Margo DeMello's Animals and Society (2012), Peggs’ Animals and Sociology (2012) and Ryan's Animals in Social Work: Why and How they Matter (2014) – all of which directly address the role played by animals in human personal and social identities. Human-Animal Studies or Interactions (HAS/HAI) is an ‘interdisciplinary field that explores the spaces that animals occupy in human social and cultural worlds and the interactions humans have with them’ (DeMello, 2012: 4). DeMello (2012: 4) examines as one of her central concerns the ways in which ‘animal lives intersect with human societies’. Human-Animal Studies respond to Bryant's assertion in 1979 that to reach ‘a full understanding of human social behaviour in all its vagaries and to be completely sensitive to the full array of its nuisances and subtleties, we must enhance our appreciation of its zoological dimension’ (cited in Irvine, 2012: 127). It seems this call still requires a comprehensive response: ‘a full understanding of society is not possible if we continue to direct the sociology gaze only at humans’ (Carter and Charles, 2018: 79).

Regarding sociological discussions of dogs specifically, topics of concern include dog-ownership and its benefits, specifically in terms of wellbeing, as well as studies exploring the personal and social dimensions of stewardship (Sanders, 2000b); social effects of a dog's presence (Walters-Esteves and Stokes, 2008); friendship formation (Wood et al., 2015); being and doing family (Power, 2008); non-human support (Krause Parello, 2012; Wood et al., 2015). Many noteworthy studies examine the impact of human-canine relationships upon specific human groups: children with disabilities (Walters-Esteves and Stokes, 2008); blind and vision impaired (Sanders, 2000a; Whitmarsh, 2005); physically disabled or hard of hearing/Deaf (Hall et al., 2017). Other research attends to a particular type of dog – guide dogs (Sanders, 2000a; Whitmarsh, 2005); service dogs (Hall et al., 2017); therapy dogs (Cherniack and Cherniack, 2014); and learning support dogs (Pidd, 2017). Many studies speak to Australian and North American experiences of living and walking with dogs, leaving the well of experiences between dogs and humans within Ireland unexamined.

Exploring this concern from an Irish perspective is of significance given Ireland's current position in relation to dog welfare and provision which I would argue is at a crossroads. Damning statistics depict the under- and mis-regulation of dog-breeding and sporting activities, with Ireland being known as the ‘puppy farming capital of Europe’; with over 100 puppy farms registered here (NARA 2022). A 2019 RTE documentary, Greyhounds, Running for their Lives, also highlighted Ireland as the site of substantial abuse and neglect of this breed, with over 6000 greyhounds unaccounted for annually, possibly cruelly killed or illegally exported to countries with no or limited welfare laws. Ireland has not historically supported dog ownership in some of the ways evident in more pro-dog societies; for example, dog parks are not found here in the numbers apparent across Europe, Australia, and the USA. Discretionary access to dog-accompanied customers in food establishments was only enabled in 2016, while only two years ago, in 2020, basic animal welfare laws which enforce the tracking and tracing of puppy sales were enacted. An incredible demand for dogs during the Covid lockdowns of the last two years certainly speaks to Ireland's love for dogs yet, as society re-opens, the high numbers of dogs being returned to shelters and expensive Covid puppies being abandoned tell another story. However, dog-positive legislative advances in the last 5-6 years, growing numbers of people who actively seek to adopt a rescue dog, and an increased and rising demand for pro-dog products, services and facilities, accompanied by mounting awareness and rejection of the institutionalised abuses of dogs, suggest that Ireland is at an important juncture, characterised by considerable demand for facilitation of an emerging dog-accompanied culture and inter-species families. Here is an opportunity to really look at ourselves, ‘look at animals’ (Berger, 1980), and begin to understand the vital role played by dogs in the development of our individual and collective identities as ‘dog-people’.

Identity

Highlighting the human-canine relationship in terms of its relationship to identity, Corkran (2015) describes the working bird dog-handler relationship as comprising ‘collaborative work’ (232) which, according to one of his participants, makes the dogs “an extension of me” (2015: 238). Another working dog – the racing greyhound - is the focus of Groizard’s (2019) reflections on human identity. She considers ‘the deeper ontological foundations for practice with and relationships to animals’ (133) to explore how certain community members experience a racing-associated social identity. She explores how, despite widespread international exposure of animal cruelty within the industry, some members of the greyhound racing community continue to proudly self-identify as ‘greyhound-people’. She encourages a move beyond the ‘general stereotypes of the greyhound industry’ to come to know ‘the distinct differences’ in how various racing-concerned individuals see themselves and enact or question industry norms and values. Drawing on her field work, she spotlights a key differentiation between those who race for the sake of racing – ‘their involvement in the sport is not dependent on prize winnings but about participating’ versus those whose focus is ‘on the monetary aspect of the industry’ (138); the former attest that they should not be equated with or compared to the latter. Quite radically, Groizard proposes that by recognising ‘separate social groupings within the greyhound industry’, an opportunity exists, not unlike the current opportunity faced by Ireland, ‘to create change from within rather than simply attacking and, subsequently, alienating those involved in the sport’ (134). She sees enhanced understandings of the nature of the ‘greyhound person’, their sense of self or identity, as the key to this change.

Reflecting on the increased numbers of animals living as co-habitants in our homes and within our families, Fox and Gee (2019: 43) illustrate how identification as part of a human-dog hybrid is apparent in our homes too. They state that the late twentieth and early twenty-first century ‘has seen rapid change in attitudes and practices towards companion animals […] (where) notions of human identity and status increasingly defined through human–animal relationships’ (43).

With a similar focus on pet or companion dogs, Włodarczyk (2021: 3) encapsulates doggy identity as ‘psiarz’ (‘dog-person’) or human-canine dyad to explore a view of dog-walker-owner and their dog(s) as a ‘container with its own hybrid agency’ (3). Nor is this a new idea. Ingold and Vergunst refer to ‘buffalo-people’ (2008:12) – ‘human-animal hybrids whose combined feet and hooves move in unison and whose perception is attuned to features of the world of common concern to such compound beings’ (2008:12). According to Włodarczyk (2021:3), human-dog hybrid agency, like buffalo-people, centres on issues of shared concern and to key activities which this entangled or ‘compound’ being undertakes. She provocatively plays on ‘woman-identified-woman’ with a new label ‘canine-identified humans’. Fletcher and Platt (2016: 7) describe ‘entanglement’, highlighting how ‘the walk is not just experienced by the human’, but crucially ‘is dependent on and interactive with animals’ (2016:7).

Considering this entangled walking being, in his exploration of the guide dog partnership, Sanders (2000a) introduces three categories of identity - personal, collective and social - which assist understandings of how an identity as dog-person is performed and may be recognised, and frames discussions of its meaning for hybridised identity more broadly. Two of his categories – personal and social – are here applied to frame the discussion of identity which follows.

Methods

Walking-interviews are considered part of the group of mobile methods which have emerged both alongside, and as a result of, the ‘mobilities turn’ in the social sciences (Edensor, 2000, 2008; Sheller and Urry, 2006; Pink et al., 2010; Lorimer, 2011). Mobile methods go by many names: ‘walk-alongs’ (Van Cauwenberg et al., 2012), ‘go-alongs’ (Kusenbach, 2003; Carpiano, 2009; Garcia et al., 2012; Thompson and Reynolds, 2019, and others), ‘in-situ and mobile methodologies’ (Foley et al., 2019: 514) and, more recently, ‘being alongs’ (Duedahl and Stilling Blichfeldt, 2020). They have diverse applications; researchers ‘walk/run/bike/swim-along interviews’ (Foley et al., 2019: 515) or may ‘increasingly drive, wheel, train, bicycle or something else with participants’ (Duedahl and Stilling Blichfeldt, 2020: 439). Fundamentally, all walking-interviews involve ‘interviewing a participant while receiving a tour of their neighborhood or other local contexts. In this regard, the researcher is “walked through” people's lived experiences’ (Carpiano, 2009: 264) of the phenomena under investigation.

Garcia et al. (2012: 1395) define ‘go-along interviewing’ as an ‘innovative approach to obtaining contextualized perspectives’ where the research participant acts as a ‘navigational guide of the real or virtual space within which he or she lives’ or, in this case, walks. Many authors highlight the ‘dynamic’ nature of the go-along (Garcia et al., 2012; Cameron et al. 2014), as well as the possibilities it offers for performative and co-productive ways to generate and access knowledge (Foley et al., 2019). Walking study participants respond to environmental cues from the always-changing environment, as well as ‘more-than-human’ factors - ‘weather, tide and terrain, flora and fauna, and the ‘feel’ underfoot’ (Foley et al., 2019: 517). Interactions with passers-by, friends, and strangers encountered on walks (Garcia et al., 2012; Cameron et al. 2014) are also a common feature of walking-interviews on participants’ home turf. Walking-interviews demonstrate significant amenability to use in researching sensitive topics given their characteristic gaze-avoiding, side-by-side positioning of researcher and participant(s) (Garcia et al., 2012). This point is well-illustrated by Campbell and Stoops’ (2017) sensitive research on sex work (see also Campbell and O’Neill, 2006).

In the context of Human-Animal studies, walking-interviews are understood as one of a range of methods ‘better able to capture the ‘beastly’ nature of animals’ (Fletcher and Platt, 2016: 225). Hamilton and Taylor (2017: 3) present a core methodological critique of researching non-human animals - the ‘idea that social means human and that social sciences means the study of humans’. Though they propose the development of a true multi-species methodology, they do not ‘yet think this is available’ (Hamilton and Taylor, 2017: 8). Until it is, they encourage researchers to use methods that account more thoroughly for the relationships between humans and other species. I propose that the walking interview, with its foregrounded capacity to directly observe behaviours in-situ, responds to this call. A key point of analysis from my research is that the perceived preferences or agency of dogs influence the doing of the walk. Therefore, dogs feature here as ‘agents and companions’ (Fletcher and Platt, 2016: 3) and attention is paid to interaction-based behaviours (i.e. pulling in an opposite direction, stopping to sniff), which, simply put, would have been impossible to observe without the use of walking-interviews. These visuals tell us something about identity as dog-person, the human-canine relationship and the ways in which it is co-constituted by human and non-human walkers, illustrating how dog-walking is done. Therefore, one of the strengths of this method is that it puts the researcher in ‘a more naturally occurring setting for observing and capturing human and dog relations in the context of their everyday mobilities’ (Fletcher and Platt, 2016: 225). They clearly enable researchers ‘to ‘be’ or ‘see’ with mobile research subjects such as dog-walker-owners and their dogs. My decision to utilise walking-interviews is related to this desire to ‘be’ and ‘see’ where dogs and their humans walk, and to acknowledge the dynamic role played by hybrid identities in any consideration of dog-walking, perhaps even to begin to address the call for a multi-species methodology (Hamilton and Taylor, 2017).

Go-alongs are not without their challenges, however. Foley et al. (2019: 514), for example, acknowledge the challenges of in-situ or mobile methodologies, which take the researcher from ‘traditional researcher-controlled environments’, into ‘messy’ and ‘unpredictable research encounters’. Many of the most enthusiastic exponents of walking methods recognise this messiness, detailing, for example, issues with technology and damage to equipment from a range of environmental conditions, encountering others while on the move, and even risk and safety-related concerns (Kusenbach, 2003; Carpiano, 2009; Garcia et al., 2012; Cameron et al., 2014; Ferguson, 2014; Thompson and Reynolds, 2019; Foley et al. 2019). Limitations notwithstanding, however, I identified this approach as presenting a relatively low-cost and accessible method of interviewing dog-walkers, as well as delivering on a need to place a minimal burden on participants. I asked for no extra time, nor travel; they were walking their dogs anyway.

Study design

The aim of my research was to explore dog-walking as it occurred to discover how the dog-person moved and was made. With this in mind, it made sense to research ‘on the go’ where human and dog(s) interact. I am myself an insider in the world of dogs; at the age of four, for my birthday, I received the best gift imaginable – a dog -, and in the forty years since, I have lived and walked with many dogs. A passion which drew me to employment within service dog circles and lured me into the sphere of dog rescue and fostering, I am without doubt a ‘dog-person’. Laterally, this accounts for the appeal of a PhD programme which would permit me to wonder/ wander further on the subject.

My study was designed around 14 walking-interviews in Cork city and county. Approval for the study was received from University College Cork's Social Research Ethics Committee. Initial participant recruitment used a purposive approach where I drew upon existing networks of ‘dog-people’ known to me from dog-walking, as well as issuing calls online for participants using dog-related social media channels. Two pilot interviews were conducted to test my interview guide (Braun and Clarke, 2013), with first formal interviews commencing shortly afterwards. Interviews were scheduled to fit in with participants’ regular dog-walking activities in settings and at times of their determination. All interviews were audio-recorded using a hand-held digital recorder. The final sample of 17 respondents ranged from 32 to 63 years of age. Participants either owned or were fostering: 1 dog (8 participants); 2 dogs (6 participants); or 3 dogs (3 participants). I completed 11 one-to-one interviews, of whom 8 respondents were female and 3 male, and 3 interviews with couples - 2 male-female pair and 1 pair comprising 2 sisters; that is a total of 14 interviews and 17 respondents. Interviews took place in various settings, rural and urban, by riversides and harbours, in nature reserves and open green spaces, and on city streets.

Dog-walking lends itself to frequent interactions and, oftentimes intimacies with strangers. While conducting my field work, I encountered a specific ethical challenge relating to unplanned recordings of non-participants. Although a long-term dog-walker-owner familiar with the degree to which dogs ‘increase the quantity of human interactions’ (Bueker, 2013: 211), the high frequency of unintended interactions was unexpected. Following Smith et al. (2017) and Palmer (2016), who both experienced ‘collateral capture’ - capturing encounters with those who were not part of the study - I adopted a practice of recording verbal consent on-the-spot from both intended and unintended participants.

Interviews ranged in length from 45 min to 2.5 h. Manual analysis of data was undertaken following Bryman’s (2012: 576-577) steps to coding or indexing qualitative data and Braun and Clarke’s (2006) guide to thematic analysis. These directed that the initial stages of analysis involved the identification of codes as well as tagging participants’ words with labels or names, and notations of any similarities and differences between interviews. When checking the accuracy of professionally transcribed interviews against audio recordings, I associated participants’ words, and later, codes with human and dogs’ behaviours, tagging the specific environment in which they occurred. Thus, participants’ words were coded together with descriptions of physical behaviours observed between participants and their dogs as part of an effort to triangulate data.

Findings: exploring dog-walking identities

In this section, I explore how dog-walkers spoke about their relationships with their dogs and experienced the dog-walk, examining how this informs ‘doggy’ identities. Following Sanders (2000a), I focus on specific areas of identity: personal identity, which refers to how one defines or perceives oneself - ‘self definition’ or ‘self concept’ (131), and social identity which Sanders (2000a: 132) defines as how one is defined by others; he suggests it forms the ‘basis or foundation for how one is treated or responded to during social exchanges and interactions’. Though Sanders discussed identity among guide dog-owners under a third category - collective identity – defined as how social actors are ‘regarded as representatives of identifiable groups’ (131-132) (i.e. gender, race, class and other macro-level categorisations), collective identity is less relevant to this work on dog-walking identities and, thus, this paper's focus lies in personal and social identities solely.

Personal identity

Among the meanings attributed to a personal identity as dog-person here were being a ‘family’ and settling into a new community. Kevin and Sally described becoming dog-people because they felt that they ‘weren't a family without the dog’, while American, ‘childfree’, Sarah (age 45, owner of a Doge de Bordeaux and Boxer) saw dogs as ‘a family thing’. She reported finding ‘my people […] through (naming dog rescue group), through their social activities. Almost everybody—I’d say half my social circle—has come through that’. Australian Damien reflected on the way in which his Australian Kelpie's, Allie, integration into Irish life prompted him to do the same.

She's had to adapt as well. And almost the way that she adapted so quickly is sort of like a reminder to me… Sometimes walking with her, that ‘in the moment’ sort of thing that dogs have, gives you the perspective that, ‘Okay, look, you just have to just be that way and just do what you have to do’.

Mindful of the vast body of literature which presents dog-walking as beneficial to personal health, understandings of dog-walking as part of individual wellbeing regimes were not surprising. For some, dog-walking was seen to represent opportunities for self-care and support for the management of health-related issues. Marian (45) volunteered for both Irish Guide Dogs and a local dog rescue group as a result of a desire to stay socially engaged during long periods of non-attendance at work due to mental ill health.

I was sick. I suffer from depression and anxiety. I probably did two stints committed to hospital and, once released, I started volunteering for the Guide Dogs for the Blind and I had one of theirs […] I was actually off work sick. I needed to be dragged out of bed and the dog was sort of doing that for me, getting her into the kennels, and more. When she went back (to Guide Dogs permanently), I decided ‘okay, I need to find a way to get a dog to get me out of bed’.

The potentially inclusionary impact of widened public access for dog-walkers’ personal identity and wellbeing is captured succinctly by Daniel, another participant who experiences mental ill health. The ability to bring his dog into the premises mentioned below, even just outside, means that he has made friends and is a more visible presence in his neighbourhood. Three people greeted Daniel and Ben by name on our walk; he described his journeys with Ben in which they walk over 20 kilometres daily and as a direct result of which he knows more people in his community.

There's a nice circuit…You can do laps around here and then go over to (pub 1), and then go up (names specific road) to (pub 2). You can sit on the terrace there and have a glass of water or a coffee or a pint or whatever…And then you can continue on down, go through the fields, admire the nice houses, along the very quiet street with oak trees overhanging it, and then down to the (pub/ restaurant 3), a bite to eat or a coffee or a beer, whatever. They love him. They let him in there. And in both these places I only know people because they like the dog.

Lily (aged 42) said of her son's service dog, Ro (Labrador Retriever), who accompanies her to work, that she takes a lunch break only because Ro needs it. ‘If she's not in with me I work straight through…and I get killed’. Similarly, Jill (age 52) described dog-walking as ‘therapeutic’, explaining that ‘the interesting thing is for someone like me who's a bit more introverted, it kind of gets me out of my comfort zone…you chat to more people’.

Others represented the dog-walk as a singular, personal reflection space. Anne who described herself as ‘cerebral’ understood the dog-walk a way of thinking or processing:

I think sometimes I’ll get ideas or I can solve problems when I am walking with them…You could get really caught up in your own thoughts - how the hell do I deal with this now? or where do I put this, that, or the other? And next thing they’re kind of looking at you—"What are you doing talking to yourself?”

Similarly, for both married couples, the dog-walking space is one in which to communicate and spend time together:

We’ll spend time with each other by walking the dog. So, it's always a good way of—I suppose it's a communication method also, you know. Every day we’d spend at least an hour together after work walking the dog before going home, you know (Kevin).

Barry however viewed the dogs on walks with wife, Jill, as a ‘distraction’, perhaps indicating the degree to which, for him, dog-walking is an engaged process, requiring communication with the dogs and thus blocking the desired communication with Jill:

The interesting thing is you (to Jill) and I sometimes would go for a walk and say, ‘Let's go and discuss something.’ And while you’re walking and thinking, there's a kind of an interesting dynamic shoulder to shoulder. But if the dogs are there, they’re a complete distraction.

Barry further associated his ability to control the dogs off-lead with his familial role or identity as father: ‘I think it's kind of a father's thing, isn't it? […] I have them in control really. They wouldn't pull on the lead for me’. Jill too viewed the meaning of dog-walking through a parental lens:

Last year I was in Kerry and the boys all went off and you (to Barry) were up here […] Nobody needed me. And I was like, ‘Right, just me now and the dogs. This is what it's going to be—you know, when they all move out’. It gave me a little taster of empty nest syndrome.

Identity as a dog-walker goes further too, influencing actual movement or gait. In Gooch (cited in Ingold and Vergunst, 2008, pp. 67–80) highlights not only that the route or ‘way’ is determined by the animal with which one walks, but also explores the way in which the speed and length of stride of human co-walkers is determined by their hybrid status. Some may stop to allow their dog to sniff, to pick up poo, or chat with other walkers, pausing and walking alternatively, some traverse roads, pause or change direction entirely in response to certain stimuli, while others march, march, march. Dog-accompanied movement or walking style of dog-walkers is a characteristic of personal identity, a defining trait.

Westgarth et al.’s (2020) conceptualisation of dog-walks as ‘functional’ and ‘recreational’ is instructive at this point. Participants spoke of ‘functional’ walks as more commonly occurring close to home, early in the morning or ‘just before bed’, while longer, ‘pleasure’ walks happened after work or other daytime activities, or at the weekend. An adjustment of stride, the impact of walking with dogs – the how - is readily apparent.

Anne explained that as she likes to let George ‘stop and sniff’ she herself walks in a ‘stop start, stop start’ kind of way. She insisted though this was ‘his walk’ and thus the associated walking style was her expectation of walking with him. Dara (age 38), Lurcher, Penny and Sheepdog Cross, Oscar walk as follows:

My morning walk is just to walk them before work, and my evening walk is my pleasure walk. So, my morning walk is just ‘we’ll just go walkie. You can go to the toilet. You can sniff around […] But my evening walk is we go out and enjoy ourselves.

Asked if morning or ‘functional’ walks were ever social or therapeutic in nature, Dara replied, gesturing: “No, that's literally like marching. Let's go, let's walk, let's do this! Yeah!”. Ingold and Vergunst (2008: 13) highlight how walking as ‘march’ impacts the walker's engagement with space: ‘Characteristic of marching is that the body is unresponsive to any kind of interaction with the environment that opens up along the way […] the world passes by unnoticed and unheard’. Developing this point further, ‘marching’ dog-walkers, or those on the clock, may be less likely to interact with others and their environments on functional walks, focused as they are on toileting and keeping account of time, while recreational walks may be more likely to produce interactive or socially oriented behaviours often associated with, and anticipated by, dog-walkers.

Social identity

Dog-walkers are openly observed and remarked upon by others, reflecting public expectations and perceptions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ dog-walkers. Non dog-walkers recognise specific doggy or doggy-person behaviours also; not all are positive. A heightened awareness of public scrutiny was widely reflected by participants and commentary on their and their dogs’ behaviour and appearance was repeatedly cited as impacting how they do or manage their dog-walks. It influenced choices around where, when and how they walk their dogs, as well as determining the objects they carry with them, and those objects’ uses and visible positioning.

Of note is Brown and Dilley’s (2012: 40) ‘anticipatory knowledges’; these are ‘ways of knowing that weave dog and human practice together as they relate to various continuities and sequences of spatio-temporal convergence of more-than-human bodies, movements, terrains and vegetation’; in other words, participants’ familiarity with their dog's (‘) typical behaviours in response to particular stimuli and how that might paint them in the eyes of their beholders. Damien and Allie avoid some situations, demonstrating clearly ‘anticipatory knowledges’:

Because of the way Allie is, we’re forced to avoid people because I know what the reaction's going to be like on both parts. Allie's reaction would mostly be to get quite aggressive and lunge at other dogs.

The dog leash or lead, and other forms of restraint (i.e. harnesses and muzzles), are obvious signifiers of identity as dog-person. These items regularly generate discussion of how a dog is restrained and result too in reflective observations on the nature of dog-walking as practice, both by those who do it and those who simply observe. Any discussion of dog control leads to considerations of breed, a very significant part of identity for dog-people. Some ‘restricted’ breeds or those perceived to be on the restricted list (i.e. subject to specific muzzling and on-leash laws) experience significant stereotyping, thus curtailing off-lead exercise and heightening dog-walkers’ self-consciousness. Dog-walkers described their associated dog-walking practice as due to potential negative behaviours by their dogs and anticipated reactions by members of the public to a ‘restricted’ dog. Though keen to promote sighthounds as pets ¹ , Siobhan said that she would not bring Polly, her sighthound, to a new dog café:

Because of her little thing that she's not into—her bum being sniffed—she’d snap and snarl and then people would think, ‘Oh, yeah, sure, that's what they’re like’. So that's my whole reason that I won't bring her to certain places because people would think that they’re all like that when I know it's just Polly's glitch as a dog, not because she's a sighthound. They’d be just going, ‘Jesus!’

Ciara (aged 48), a walker of a multiple dog pack comprising 3 large dogs, 2 German Shepherds and 1 Husky, too highlighted very deliberate choices made regarding walking routes. The benefit of clear lines of sight are clear as she described it as facilitating self-regulation in advance of meeting others. ‘So (names suburban town) is nicely lit up. The footpaths are really wide. There's nice straight patches. You can see people coming, especially other dogs. You can tidy yourself up’.

Damien described his use of a dog muzzle; while this is not always worn by Allie but worn as needed, it functions as both a protective measure (when worn), as well as an always-carried symbolic object indicative of Allie's potential for aggression to passing walkers, and according to Damien, of his responsible attitude to ownership and management of risk.

Examining dog-walking as risky behaviour is revealing. Describing dog-walkers in his local park, Daniel reflected on the egalitarian or to him, less risky, nature of such groups:

The walking groups they’re —oh, what's the word I’m looking for—egalitarian, I suppose. We don't talk about who has the biggest car or anything […] You know when you meet people normally, ‘Oh, what do you do?’ is the first—And you get so sick of it. I mean, you (addressing the researcher) might not like the question but the answer ‘I’m finishing off my doctorate’ sounds a hell of a lot better than ‘Oh, I have chronic long-term depression and I’ve not done anything’, you know?

Daniel's response simultaneously praises the inherent privacy of dog-walking groups while also revealing a deeply personal response. This is redolent of Groizard’s (2019: 133) examination of identity among greyhound racing communities; she explored how, unlike many of their other social roles and despite their involvement in an increasingly controversial activity, a role as ‘greyhound person’ signified a social identity in which those interviewed felt a sense of pride. Daniel too expressed pride in dog-walking, explaining, only half-joking, that he is viewed as a ‘great guy’ given his association with Ben, his Collie Cross.

He's just so good-looking. People stop me all the time to say that, like! I live vicariously—and his good behaviour and—his shiny coat and his—! I take it all. ‘Thank you for agreeing to take care of a dog. You must be a great guy!

Another type of ‘risky’ behaviour, framed by an association with dogs, was captured well by Anne when describing how a man who came to clean her chimney, though perceived by her as ‘a hard man’, in reflecting on the loss of his dog performed his vulnerability instead:

He looked like a real hard jaw, not because he had tattoos or piercings or anything like that […] I was over at Harry (her dog), ‘Where did you get him?’ And, sure, then it all came out - about a golden retriever. A golden retriever that he had for twelve years. And he cried over that dog. ‘Oh, I cried over that dog. I swore never again, I’d never get another dog. Never again. And now we’re thinking of getting another dog.’

Anne reflected on ‘who the man was’ and what it taught her about how a social identity as dog-owner permits us to access another, riskier, side to ourselves and others:

It was all about the dog. And I’m not going into the stereotype of men can only express their emotions through the dog, but I think it's a certain type of person that—you know, including myself, when it comes to the dogs—that's where you’re vulnerable, like. That's your kind of weakness…

A tendency to engage in emotional or intimate behaviours with other dog-walkers quickly emerged as a characteristic of a doggy social identity. Peter (47), ‘not a dog-lover’, who walks his family's dog, Rocket, described the following:

You get to meet a lot of different people when you’re doing a walk, like, and some of them open up very quickly about stuff. Like I met one […] an elderly gentleman comes over and starts saying, you know, how this dog was meant to be his daughter's dog but she died of a heart attack or something, like, when she was relatively young. He was watching a film and started crying, the dog started licking his face. Like, why are you telling me all this? I just—and I didn't know your name, like.

Following this thread, Barry, drawing on ‘jiejing’ (借景), a design idea accredited to Ji Cheng's Yuanye (園冶) (c.1635), reflected eloquently on the unique power of the dog-walk to transport us to other places and states of being.

There's a lovely phrase in architecture. If you were building and, say, like in the distance there's a scene, a hill scene or a church steeple or something, and you make a window looking out on that. They call it ‘borrowing from the landscape’. So, you’re in here (pointing to the ground with both hands) but you’re borrowing that piece over there (pointing towards the horizon). Dogs bring you out into a whole other borrowed landscape, an emotional and physical one.

With obvious emotion, Barry described his vicarious sense of joy watching his dogs, a Standard Poodle and Poodle Cross:

We go down by the river. And they have their run and they’re smelling every lamppost and the usual stuff. And I think you get an associated thrill when you see them. You’re almost, you feel it yourself. You feel the joy for them, yeah, as they go racing around you (Barry).

Barry also highlighted the recognition of ‘doggy’ social identities among others who identify similarly. He captures how very similar situations – waiting in GP and vet surgeries – manifest very differently on the basis of a shared social identity:

It's like when you walk into the vets, actually. That's the classic example. You know, you walk into a GP surgery and nobody talks. It's like everybody's sitting in their own isolated zone. Whereas you go into a veterinary surgery and it's an immediate thing. Everybody starts talking about their dog. So, they’re like a conduit for a whole other world really. No question about it.

Discussions of vulnerability and risk lead us to another kind of risk-taking inherent among those who identify as dog-people, raising the issue of how dog-walking might speak to gendered experiences of walking (Heddon and Turner, 2010, 2012) ² . A potential contribution to this debate is the way in which the presence of a dog, and a social identity as dog-walker, may alter dog-walkers’ use of risky or dark places, demonstrating a conceptualisation of risk which is co-constructed or understood in terms of an identity as hybrid being, ‘dog-person’.

You know, one time I was just—at the back of an industrial estate, deserted, nothing. ‘Anything could happen here, like. I could be attacked. I could be left for dead.’…Or we’ll come across, I don't know, some kind of execution going on. Do you know where your mind would wander? […] It didn't occur to me until I thought: Well, would I go down here? Would I be hanging around the back of this building at the back of the industrial estate if I didn't have the dogs? Well, of course I wouldn't, you know (Anne).

Reflecting on her use of abandoned industrial estates as an off-lead dog-walking location, Anne highlighted the sense of community inherent among those whose social identity was characterised by dog-person identities:

What I’ve found emerged was a lot of dog-walker-owners and suddenly we kind of took over the place! You would—and we get to know each other […] So, you could let the dog run but if you saw another dog, you’d put your own dog on the lead. And yeah, we just all know each other to say hi and have a chat with.

Reflecting further on public perception of the human-canine hybrid, Siobhán explained the vital impact of the decisions dog-walker-owners make, particularly those of maligned dog breeds, on the development of a social identity for them and their dogs, especially for their potential as ‘pet’. She explained how she viewed dogs and dog-walker-owners within poorly understood breed dyads to be ‘breed ambassadors’, a heavy responsibility again related to social identity. Despite the weight of that responsibility, reflecting finally on what it meant to live and walk with dogs she concluded: ‘it's the happiest I can be’.

Discussion and conclusions

Broadly seeking to challenge the traditional exclusion of non-human animals from sociological frames of reference, this work responds to Bryant’s 1979 call for sociologists to ‘add animals to the lexicon of our discipline’ (cited in Irvine, 2012: 127) and addresses too, perhaps, Hamilton and Taylor’s (2017) elicitation of multi-species methodologies. This work explores complex human-animal interactions, introducing the intersubjectivity of non-human animals to social science debates where they feature not as objects – other -, but as subjects - as self.

Most significantly, the core focus of this work has been the way in which it shows dog-walking as a practice of hybrid identity-making. Dog-walking/ownership encourages practitioners to reflect on the capacity for enhanced integration in communities from which they might otherwise remain apart. For example, Sarah (originally from America) talked about ‘finding her people’ within dog-rescue circles and recognising dog stewardship as ‘family’, while Marian's dogs get her ‘out of bed’ and back into life. Appreciably increased participation in community as a dog-person due to quotidian dog-walking is matched by enhanced experiences of social inclusion and integration. Jill was out of her comfort zone, meeting with and talking to strangers while dog-walking, and in it again given her dogs’ presence in a temporarily empty nest. Participation by dog-walker-owners in individual, corporate and community wellbeing practices, in dog charities and rescue initiatives were well-documented in this study's field work also.

This work also shows participants as attaching multiple meanings to the dog-walk; for some it is a mundane, routine, everyday practice – ‘let's go, let's do this’ (Dara) - marked by both Peter's wonderment at the unexpected intimacies sought by some dog-walkers and an appreciation of its egalitarian nature (Daniel). For others, it embodies their caring responsibilities and roles for family, their dog(s), and for the community where they walk, engendering feelings of joy in and responsibility to place, facilitating individual and social connection, and bringing those who live and walk with dogs some of their happiest, and inevitably, saddest moments.

Finally, from a methodological and epistemological perspective, this work also raises important questions about how we perceive, capture and acknowledge the human-animal dynamic. The dog-walk was chosen as the site of inquiry as it is here that an otherwise domestic or private relationship is made public (Kusenbach, 2003; Carpiano, 2009; Garcia et al., 2012; Cameron et al., 2014; Duedhal and Stilling Blichfeldt, 2020; O’Neill and Roberts, 2020). With every step, I traced the meanings and identities forged through the everyday practice of dog-walking, specifically considering the complex entanglements that emerge comprising owner or walker, the ‘dog-person’, and their dog, as the walk unfolds. A core contribution of this work therefore is its recognition of the dog as co-walking agent or subject, and the dog-walk as allowing us to ‘borrow’ from others’ embodied and phenomenological landscapes. This work explores our being with dogs and, in so doing, speaks to an enhanced understanding of the hybridised selves – humans and dogs - who wander the physical and emotional spaces of our dog-walking worlds.