Dogs in the Leisure Experience. Neil Carr

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СКАЧАТЬ a distant second. Barely a day went by in all that time when we did not spend time walking together (as all Border Collie owners will doubtless attest, such dogs and owners can easily walk forever, or so it seems) or engaging in the simple play of throw and fetch. The result: I am now a confirmed dog lover and in particular a lover of mongrels. It seems I am forever destined to have black and white mutts in my household who have a passing relation to the purebred Border Collie, and Gypsy is my current canine companion.

      Rudy (2011: 36), when talking of his own relationship with his dogs, stated: ‘As my dogs and I work hard to learn a common language and share a life together, we are all becoming something new, something part human, part dog, a part of one another.’ I have talked previously of the notion of the ‘dumanog’, a human–dog hybrid that fits well with Rudy’s description (Carr, 2006). Similarly, using Goffman’s concept, Sanders (1999) saw the dog and owner as a ‘with’; where they are perceived to be a group whose members are together. This togetherness is demonstrated and reinforced not just by the leash that links them in public but the looks and physical contact they each give one another in a show of ongoing reassurance.

      While I remain wedded to the existence of the dumanog in the moment it is important not to oversimplify a more complex reality. While my dog and I can at specific moments be a dumanog, at others we are separate, clearly a human and a dog. This description of the relationship a human can have with a dog is reflected in the views of Wedde (2007: 284) who stated that: ‘I know that the dog and I are utterly different in ways that neither of us will understand; and yet we inflect each other’s behavior, and we inhabit a shared world that is simultaneously comprehensible and mysterious.’ The important point to remember is not the nature of the relationship with their dogs that, like me, Rudy and Wedde think they have, but that not all dog–human relations are like this or necessarily even need to be for the benefit of all participants. The idea of the relation between a dog and human being specific to the moment allows me to position myself as both owner and companion to my dogs, who can themselves be pets, companions and simply ‘dogs’. In this way, we can each of us be many things at different times and in different circumstances.

Outline of Book Content

      Following on from this introductory chapter the book looks, in Chapter 2, at the working dogs who exist within the leisure environment. Some of these animals are directly employed by the leisure industry, while others have been utilized by the industry in marketing leisure experiences and destinations. The focus of Chapter 3 is on dogs and sport, looking first at sports that are based on dogs before examining those that have been developed to cater to dogs. The link between the working and sports dog is seen to be a close one, with many sports involving dogs having grown out of the work for which various breeds of dog have been developed. Chapter 4 then examines the notion of the leisured dog and the dog as an object of human leisure. The former necessitates a discussion of whether dogs actually have leisure, while the latter is grounded in the discussion surrounding the idea of the dog as a sentient being.

      From looking at the types of dogs and their experiences in leisure, Chapter 5 examines the ways in which the leisure experiences of dogs are provided for. A central facet of this chapter is an analysis of whether such provisions are really for dogs or for their owners. Chapter 6 then focuses more specifically on the provision of kennels, dog day care and other services that are ostensibly provided for dogs but in reality are strongly oriented towards dog owners’ perceptions of their animals’ needs.

      In the initial book proposal, Chapters 7 and 8, which look at dogs as cuisine, and cuisine for dogs, respectively, were one chapter. The logic of this was to bring together what I saw as being two sides of the same coin. The credit for splitting this into the two chapters in the final version of the book rests with the publisher. On balance, I think I prefer the final version as it gives space for the two issues to be addressed separately, without one dominating the other. At the same time, I would urge the reader to see the linkages that exist between the two.

      The final chapter attempts to bring together some of the main ideas raised in the book, but more importantly it seeks to suggest a future for research on dogs in the leisure experience.

       2 Working Dogs

      Introduction: Dogs as Tools

      It is not the intention of this chapter to examine working dogs per se, though such a focus is not without value. Rather, this chapter focuses on working dogs where they intersect with the leisure environment. Consequently, one of the foci of this chapter will be examining how the presence of working dogs in an environment has been utilized to construct idealized images of leisure and tourism landscapes. This discussion will cover both contemporary uses of representations of working dogs in landscapes to promote places as tourist or leisure environments, and how such use has evolved over time, and how the representation and positioning of the working dog may have altered. Another focus of this chapter will be a discussion of the extent to which dogs are employed as workers in the tourism and leisure industry and the history of this use. This chapter will also encompass a discussion of the changing role of working dogs in the face of the changing nature of experiences sought by tourists and leisured people. The discussions within this chapter will be grounded in the issue of animal rights and will discuss changing patterns in the use of working dogs in leisure and tourism experiences in line with altering social moral values, focusing on the construction of dogs as tools or objects to be used and/or owned by humans in the leisure and tourism environment.

Dogs at Work in Leisure, Tourism and Hospitality Experiences

      There is a wide variety of tasks in which dogs are employed within the leisure environment. They are an interesting reflection of the diverse nature of dogs and the skill sets they have to offer. They include the sniffer dogs who patrol the airports of the world, searching for a diverse array of materials that include drugs, foodstuffs and explosives. Another arena in which dogs are employed is that of search and rescue, where they are tasked with finding lost and/or injured individuals out in the rural/wilderness landscape. Search and rescue operations in such areas have a long history and their growth is a reflection of the growing utilization of such spaces by people seeking outdoor hiking, climbing and skiing/snowboarding experiences. Consequently, the date of establishment and size of search and rescue dog associations is largely a reflection of the history and popularity of these types of tourism/recreation in the areas in which the associations are located. For example, in the UK the Search and Rescue Dog Association (SARDA) was formed in 1965 in the Scottish highlands (Locke, 1987), reflecting the wilderness of the region and its growing popularity with tourists. By 1971 SARDA had devolved into separate Scottish, English and Welsh associations, and today they exist under the wider umbrella of the National Search and Rescue Dog Association (SARDA England, 2014). In comparison, the American Rescue Dog Association was formed in 1972 after people in the Seattle area began training their dogs for avalanche work in the late 1960s (American Rescue Dog Association, 1991).

      The most established image of the search and rescue dog is that of СКАЧАТЬ