Taking Dogs Seriously?

Abstract

This paper focuses on the ethics of human interventions in the lives of companion animals. It argues that human interaction with dogs can reveal much about what makes us human, but that in order to take dogs seriously and engage with them in an ethical manner we must interrogate a number of practices that have been accepted in dog breeding and owning circles. Here my focus is on querying the ethics of practices that involve direct corporeal interventions on the bodies of dogs, in particular legal attempts to prohibit tail-docking. Although Donna Haraway’s work is a major influence on the paper, I depart from her analysis in arguing that suffering must remain the keystone of our ethical relation to companion animals.