Introduction

Abstract

Biologist Donna Haraway’s work is guided by a central question, “whom do I touch when I touch my dog?” (2008, p. 3, emphasis mine). She foregrounds her canine’s individuality in order to propose a model of interaction that does not reinforce traditionally accepted boundaries between humans and other animals. This book has similarly been largely inspired and guided by a remarkable dog — Sam the husky, whose presence in my life has only ever served to enrich and enhance it. I didn’t know, and could never have foreseen, the impact of embarking with Sam in what Haraway calls a “companion species” relationship (p. 15), maintained by mutual respect and affection. Underwritten by love and interspersed with many long walks, my work is, at its core, about my dog. Sam, for his part, seems to have always thought that he is a person and I have always been inclined to agree with him. Observing first-hand the easy fluidity of interspecies affection and identification in my own home made me keenly aware of how Western philosophy, historically, has worked to deny subject-hood to animals, to configure this relationship situated in love and mutual respect as delusional or wishful thinking. It is possible, however, that the act of anthropomorphizing an animal is not necessarily rooted in what we, as humans, wish to ascribe onto the animal to suit our own cultural or symbolic requirements, but instead expresses something we receive from the animal, when we are situated together in mutual understanding.