In the digital realm, Brodie (@bestboybrodie) soared to social media stardom, with 1.5 million individuals following the social media accounts of this “spunky, one-year-old partially blind rescue pup who looks a bit like a Picasso masterpiece” (Mertz, 2020). Disability and animal studies scholars have argued that accounts like Brodie’s often “cutify” animals coded as disabled by emphasizing their apparent helplessness and juvenile qualities (Laforteza, 2014), and/or serve as “inspiration porn,” objectifying “disabled bodies for the purposes of inspiring able-bodied [ones]” (Bruges, 2018). And while some people may adopt “special needs” animals because of their perceived disability to signal their concern for animal welfare (Katz and Burchfield, 2020), systems routinely euthanize animal companions (ACs) with perceived disabilities if they deem their care too burdensome for human caregivers (Birke and Gruen, 2022).
At the same time, animal assisted interventions (AAI) or therapies (AAT) incorporate a growing number of species as therapeutic tools or partners for people with disabilities. Formalized programs train “service animals” to complete specific tasks for humans, such as mitigating physical barriers for those with low vision or responding to seizures or psychological needs (Pierce and Dreschel, 2023; Winkle et al., 2016). Individuals also use informal emotional support animals to provide care within homes (Carroll et al., 2020) or serve various publics, such as stressed university students (Barker et al., 2016). Scholars increasingly query the welfare and care of animals in these roles, questioning the labour they perform, and raising issues of agency and consent (Jenkins, 2024; Oliver, 2016; Sarrafchi et al., 2025; Taylor et al., 2014). Interrogating both care provided by humans for disabled animals and provided by animals for disabled humans can reveal how deep tensions surrounding interspecies inequities in labour and care can be mitigated and/or reinforced.
This paper draws on findings from a thematic and theory-informed analysis of twenty semi-structured interviews on caregiving in Canadian multispecies homes to consider how disability discursively and experientially permeates human-AC relationships. We review recent disability studies and animal studies literatures and their intersections. We then summarize our project methodology and present key findings along the following themes: (1) intimate care work and disabled ACs; (2) breeds and capital; (3) pathologization of ‘problem’ dog behaviour; (4) animal carework and disabled human companions; (5) trauma and recovery in and across species; and (6) intelligence and madness in interspecies relationships. We conclude by highlighting the messiness and ambivalences of caring relationships across species lines, which both reinforce and disrupt ableist and anthropocentric norms.
Questions surrounding the status, value, and ethical treatment of humans and other-than-human animals (hereafter, animals) coded-as-disabled and the interconnections between the two remain fraught with tension. These tensions emerge against the backdrop of historic and ongoing eugenics-informed pathologization, animalization, and even elimination of humans and animals deemed as unproductive or irrational. An important concept here is neoliberal-ableism, which describes a system that values lives according to their capacity to conform to neoliberal norms—norms that fuse capitalist and eugenic logics—such that any deviation is mobilized to create and sustain hierarchies of being (Collins et al., 2025). Neoliberal-ableism continues to advance the eugenic project of capacitating abled and debilitating disabled life by rationalizing the premature deaths of humans and non-humans framed as unproductive or flawed by normative standards.
Animal rights scholars “have mostly remained silent on the issue of ableism,” while some have gone so far as to reinforce ableist notions (Côté-Boudreau, 2024, p. 217). A widely-cited example is Peter Singer, who has come under fierce critique from disability scholars for advancing arguments that “persons with disability are lesser forms of humans” (Lewiecki-Wilson, 2011, p. 76). While many feminist care ethicists and critical disability scholars reject Singer’s hierarchical claims about species and abilities, disability scholarship often remains focused primarily on the human (Adams, 2020). Beyond Singer, ableist discourses frequently permeate evaluations of humans and animals, framing their worth in terms of perceived productive value to a neoliberal-ableist society (Somers and Soltadic, 2020; Taylor, 2020).
These standards remain rooted in euro-western knowledge systems and premised on a highly specific “humanist” vision of the human: the white, nondisabled, language-endowed, masculine subject, who still operates as a stand-in for the species (Braidotti, 2013). Côté-Boudreau (2024, p. 213) argues that we cannot disentangle speciesism—oppression due to species membership—from ableism—oppression of those deemed to fall outside of metrics of able-bodied/mindedness—as the hegemonic moral order that continues to exclude certain humans and animals “from full moral consideration on the grounds that they lack the capacity to reason, to speak, or to exercise moral agency.” Animal ethicists often frame questions of agency and “rights” through a neurotypical bias (Salomon, 2020), which assumes that the (humanist) human’s capacities for moral reasoning should determine whether legal notions of rights ought to be extended to animals. Yet in failing to consider the diverse ways in which human cognitive properties themselves manifest, the capacity-for-moral-reasoning argument instead casts (some) disabled people as less than fully human, and thereby “pits human rights against animal rights” (Salomon, 2010, p. 52).
Most scholarship on disability and animals focuses on domesticated farmed animals (e.g., Somers and Soltadic, 2020; Taylor, 2020), leaving critical questions surrounding the ethics, treatment, and valuation of ACs at the disability-animality nexus relatively unexplored. In the context of dominant pet-keeping culture(s), animal companions, especially dogs (which are the focus of this study), occupy a relatively privileged position on what Irvine and Cilia (2017) call the ‘sociozoological scale.’ While ‘pet’ dogs are often granted the status of family members, they are nevertheless embedded in anthroparchal systems, or those that assert human dominance and discipline animals to fit within human-centred spaces and conform to human expectations and discourses (Cudworth, 2011; 2024). Dogs’ status as “family” is tenuous; it depends on their fit with (human) conceptions of what constitutes a ‘good dog’ (Armbruster 2002, Charles, 2014; Power, 2008; Van Patter et al., in press). Importantly, not all dogs, nor all humans, receive equal regard: for example, breeds labeled dangerous, often through racialized rhetoric (e.g., pit bulls), occupy more precarious positions in human-animal relations (Eccles, 2022), though they may be 'rescued’ particularly through forms of white heteronormative saviourism (Boisseron, 2018; Guenther, 2020; Weaver, 2021). Conversely, individuals with disabilities are frequently positioned as ‘saved’ by service dogs (Todd, 2024), complicating sociozoological hierarchies. These dynamics underscore the need to examine how disability shapes logics for both humans and dogs.
Dominant ableist logics often render animals with perceived disabilities “killable” (Haraway, 2008). Recent scholarship offers more nuanced understandings of what constitutes a “good death” for ACs, recognizing that euthanasia can represent “an act of responsible killing and of care” (Schuurman, 2017, p. 208) when significant pain or suffering is present and that these decisions are often negotiated through gendered “relational body work” (Satama and Huopalainen, 2019, p. 370). Yet, as Hurn and Badman-King (2019) point out, ethical reasoning around death is complex; both euthanasia and natural death involving palliative care can entail forms of violence, and the boundary between a “good” and “bad” death is culturally constructed and often unclear. Within this context, binary thinking around disability and ability frequently positions ACs within rigid categories of “healthy” or “unhealthy,” with the latter serving as a precursor for euthanasia, even in cases lacking strong evidence of pain or suffering (Arathoon and Van Patter, 2024). The assumption that disability renders an animal’s life no longer worth living intersects with ableist discourses targeting disabled humans, which presume to know another’s quality of life (Andre, 2003). Taylor (2017, p. 23), for instance, describes the so-called mercy killing of a fox with a disability similar to her own, where disability was equated with “suffering and fear of contagion.” Likewise, Tzark (2020, p. 77) argues that politics, not biology alone, inform disability’s treatment across species, as humans often view ACs as objects “whose agency is disabled in relation to the human” due to perceived dependence, coded as “weakness, vulnerability, and passivity.”
Previous studies show that owners of dogs identified as disabled toed a narrative line between deficiency and heroism when describing their ACs (Birke and Gruen, 2022). Similarly, animal shelter staff and volunteers have been found to champion disabled dogs’ resilience and right to live, while simultaneously framing them as “infantile, remarkable, and in need of saviors” (Guenther, 2023). Such narratives “work to expand capitalist beliefs of companion animals as lively capital by showing that disabled dogs have value as companions” (Guenther, 2023). These logics operate in two key ways: (1) by inscribing value into animal bodies through forms of non-human charisma (Lorimer, 2007) and the affective labour that these animals perform (Barua, 2017); and (2) by positioning ACs with disabilities as sources of social capital for those who care for them, a dynamic demonstrated by our opening example of Best Boy Brodie’s social media stardom.
Within disability studies, a small but vocal number of scholars reject animal concerns out of fear that animal rights will overshadow disability rights, while others believe that disabled people can only access “dignified moral status” if it is denied to animals (Côté-Boudreau, 2024; Donaldson and Kymlicka, 2016, p. 174). Speciesist or anthropocentric ideologies and practices can also undergird the treatment of animals in AAI/AAT. An example is Kolme’s (2020) argument that emotional support animals act as prostheses, and therefore human handlers should have body-like rights to their animals. Du Toit and Benatar (2021) respond that animals, as individual beings, should not be viewed as prostheses to which human “handlers” can have body-like rights, but as independent moral actors. By treating ACs as human extensions or as independent entities, this debate fails to engage the particular relationalities and interdependencies that can characterize the bonding between support animals and their supported humans (and vice versa).
To bridge tensions between animal and disability rights, Salomon (2010) argues for a model of linked oppression, which considers the ways species and disability justice entangle based on assumed neurotypical (or ableist) superiority. As Taylor (2017, p. 133) notes, instead of taking “a philosophy of hierarchy for granted,” we might consider the linked oppression of those who are othered by western humanism. We might think with “the vast differences we find both within and beyond the human community” (Wolfe, 2022, p. 75) instead of creating false dichotomies between “all humans” and “all animals.” For instance, work in mad studies has recently engaged with human-animal relationships by critically exploring “madness” across species and pushing back on pathologization and psychiatrization, rather situating understandings historically and politically (Abelman, 2020; Taylor, 2020). These intersections highlight the possibilities of a “posthuman disability studies” (Goodley et al., 2014).
Arathoon (2024) argues that we need closer attention to mutual care, which values the wellbeing of everyone involved in caring assemblages. Such a focus on interdependence within and across species may expand our attention beyond the human (Adams, 2020), without smoothing out power differentials that exist across human social identities. Similarly, Birke and Gruen (2022) focus on reciprocity to move away from dependence/independence discourses toward recognising how the additional care needed for so-called disabled humans and animals adds a complex layer to interspecies relationships. As an illustration, Price (2017) recounts that her service dog Ivy’s aging-related needs precluded her from “fitting” as a normative service dog. This, to Price (p. 14), ignores the interdependent care relationship between human and dog, and fails to recognize “a different kind of care in human-animal relations” outside of what Arathoon (2024) might label parasitic care, where only humans receive benefit and/or benefit at animals’ expense. Price (2017) defines the ethics of accessible care as care that recognizes context. Overall, disability, ableism, and speciesism find themselves entangled within our relationships with ACs. This research explores how multispecies households reinforce and/or disrupt this linked oppression through carework, with our analysis working from a disability affirmative standpoint that crips multispecies care.
This paper draws from a multi-phased research project designed to take animals seriously in the care relations within interspecies households (see also Linares-Roake et al., 2025) 1. The project utilised mobile/place-based interviewing and invited participants to create multimedia stories about their care relationships (e.g. Rice and Mundel 2018; 2019). This article draws from the interview phase, which involved 20 mobile/place-based semi-structured interviews conducted by authors JLR and AB with humans and their dogs in southwestern Ontario, Canada. Mobile/place-based interviews allow researchers to “engage with the affective, embodied, fleeting, and sensuous characteristics of human-animal lifeworlds” (Arathoon, 2021, p. 105; see also Cudworth, 2018), reducing human-centrism by making dogs physically present during the interaction.
Human participants were recruited for a study on multispecies caregiving and invited to speak about care practices within and across species. Interviews took placed in locations chosen by participants, including homes, backyards, and routine/favourite walking routes. Conversations centred on caring relationships with dogs, other humans (aging parents, children, partners, siblings, blended families, neighbours, etc.) and animal kin (e.g. cats, ferrets, birds), both inside and outside the home. Most participants chose pseudonyms for themselves and their dogs; where they did not, a random name generator was used.
Participants identified multiple caregiving roles within their households. During the initial screening process, participants reported that at least one dog in their household was experiencing: age-related care needs (end of life or puppyhood/adolescence, n=6), emotional/behavioural issues (n=7), a chronic/terminal illness (n=2), and/or a physical injury (n=2). Eight participants identified as living with a disability; a chronic physical or mental illness; and/or age-related needs; and five reported that they supported a family member or friend with disability, chronic physical or mental illness, or age-related need. Twelve participants identified as a parent or guardian for at least one child; with seven caring for a child under the age of eighteen.
For this analysis, author LVP coded interview transcripts thematically. Coding was emergent and resulted in an initial set of codes and subcodes pertaining to human, dog, and collective themes around disability and normativity. We discussed interpretation of coding findings as a collective, including inputs from a post-qualitative inquiry by author CR, which read transcripts alongside critical theory, including in posthumanist disability studies (Gibson et al., 2025; Jackson and Mazzei, 2012; Rice et al., 2022a/b). Collective interpretation led to the synthesis of six broader themes discussed below. We struggled with authorship as our process was deeply collaborative. We have attempted an order that reflects contributions to analysis and writing, as well as critical behind-the-scenes labour. The last author listed is the PI for the larger funded project.
Our first identified theme surrounds intimate carework and disabled ACs. Conversations around physical differences of ACs often started with discussions of care interviewees provided. For example, Jo explained that her cat Zee “has some disabilities... she’s been an extra project, that’s—not a project. Ummm she needed a little bit of extra.” For Kelsey, finding carers for her dog Bronx when they travel was an ongoing challenge due to his intervertebral disc disease (IVDD), a degenerative spinal disease that is more prevalent in certain breeds of dogs:
I don’t want to board him anymore ... I don’t want him to run too much and then he starts to get a little bit wobbly and then they don’t know that he needs to rest, or what if it causes another flare up.
Sharon and her daughter Bella matter-of-factly discussed the care that Melly’s inverted (or “screw”) tail involved, including having to “wipe his butt after he goes number two.” Other physical care interventions included Parker’s husband (a registered massage therapist) providing deep tissue massage for Bert’s suspected arthritis, and Jo’s use of chiropractic and acupuncture treatments, physiotherapy in a pool, a stroller, and an orthopedic mattress for her late dog, Dot, who had a spinal injury.
Participants also discussed mitigating risks and limiting dogs’ activities because of perceptions of health and ability. For instance, Parker mitigated risks with dachshunds Rex and Bert, both long-backed dogs at higher risk of IVDD, by limiting how frequently they went up and down the stairs. Melissa similarly worried about her “special needs” dog Honey, a husky mix with hip dysplasia: “What if she falls? What if she hurts herself? ... I’m not about to trust her, to just be out and free. I think with her hip it’s just too much risk.” Melissa also discussed routine carework with their late dog, Jackson, a pitbull mix with epilepsy:
Everything kinda revolved around [Jackson] and his needs. [He] couldn’t go on a super long walk or he would have a seizure ... I couldn’t take him to a park, or he would have a seizure ... he needed medication at 7am, 3pm, 7pm, 11pm ... He couldn’t not be with me.
Melissa reflected on how his disability shaped their relationship and her decision to not engage in much obedience training with him:
[H]e was here with us for a good time not a long time ... not so much that there wasn’t, emotional investment, but ... we invested more time in making sure that he was like stable and happy, than making sure that he was going to be like a good long-term fit for our family.
Care work for dogs with chronic illnesses is often conceptualized as a stop gap aimed at maintaining “the welfare of the dog at an acceptable level” (Christiansen et al., 2013, p. 527) rather than as a deliberate pursuit of multispecies flourishing. This deficit-based view of dogs coded disabled is likely reinforced by neoliberal-ableist logics (e.g. Collins, 2025; Somers and Soldatic, 2020; Taylor, 2020) and speciesist assumptions that caregiving for chronically ill animal companions is “less burdensome” than caring for humans (Britton et al., 2018). The availability of euthanasia as an option for ACs when care demands become overwhelming often underpins such assumptions (Britton et al., 2018; Christiansen et al., 2013), despite evidence suggesting that the emotional and physical carework is comparable.
However, participant reflections also revealed an intimate awareness of their AC’s comfort and wellbeing, cultivated through the often gritty and messy work of care. This work encompassed both physical practices (e.g. sports massages) and emotional investments (e.g. concern over physical abilities and risk), and evoked a spectrum of responses from participants, some of which were hard to put into words, such as Jo’s struggle to find a better language than categorizing Zee as an objectified “project.” The intimacy of daily care interactions between dog(s) and human(s) described by women interlocuters points to a form of gendered body work with their dogs, where relations are embroiled within both “the intensity of care [and] pure compassion” and “insecurities, struggles, fear of loss and death, and uncertainty” (Satama & Hopalainen, 2019, p. 367).
Some participant narratives foregrounded breeds and capital, our second theme, describing selecting ACs based on breed popularity and the social capital they carried; however, such capital often came at a material high cost—from high veterinary costs and untimely deaths to questions about purebreds’ perceived usefulness in a neoliberal-ableist order. As noted with dachshunds, selective breeding places certain dog breeds at higher risk of health conditions. Jake shared that their previous dog, a Boston terrier, had a “serious heart defect” because that’s “just the way they’re bred.” He relayed their veterinarian’s advice to “take this dog back to the breeder … it’s gonna last two to five years.”
Several dogs in the study were French bulldogs, or “Frenchies,” a breed growing in popularity. Veterinary advocates increasingly flag breed-related health and welfare concerns for brachycephalic (short-nosed) dogs like Frenchies (Packer et al., 2019), whose “breed-standard” makes them highly susceptible to a host of issues, such as respiratory problems, spinal issues, eye injuries, and heat intolerance, often requiring medical intervention and limiting their life spans (Ekenstedt et al., 2020). This has led some to advocate against their use in advertising and social media campaigns (Menor-Campos, 2024; Morel et al., 2024). Considering Bronx’s health, Kelsey lamented that dog insurance is “so expensive for Frenchies,” because they are “kind of over-bred … they try to breed for these rare colors … and then a lot of them end up having these [pause] genetic issues.”
Sharon similarly recounted that upon getting a DNA test for their Frenchie, the vet remarked she “better hope it comes back not 100% cause he will be healthier.” Sharon reflected that Frenchies were “not bred for any purpose like they don’t hunt, they don’t guard, they don’t herd […] they have no skill [laughter].” This understanding reflects an ableist logic that defines an animal’s worthiness and purpose according to the skills and contributions they make (such as hunters, guards, herders, or entertainers) that fits with capitalist understandings of “productivity” (Somers and Soldatic, 2020). From hoping dogs are not 100% purebred, to recommendations to take “defective” dogs back to breeders, discourses of disability, including eugenics and disposability, circulate in discussions of ACs and link with assumptions and expectations around dog breeds. We also note that disability is systemically generated through genetic selection in the lucrative “pedigree” breeding industry, resulting in serious physiological conditions and welfare concerns for some dogs (Worboys et al., 2018).
Within many participant accounts there was a pathologization of ‘problem’ dog behaviour, our third theme. Participants described behaviours like excessive barking, chewing, and perceived aggression as problematic. To the authors, there appears to be a messiness in separating out behaviours that are innate to dogs in their dogness, and behaviours that are born of a lack of sensory or physical enrichment. Behavioural challenges tied to separation-related distress were noted by several participants. For instance, Noel explained that “[Winnie] won’t even eat, he won’t drink, he won’t nothing until I get back.” Macey similarly described Kristoff as having “wicked separation anxiety to the point where I put him in a different room from me, he’d like pee and poop.” Separation-related distress emerges in the literature as one of the most common “behavioural problems” in companion dogs (Ogata, 2016), and research from the US suggests that it is considered a moderate to severe behavioural issue in many dog-human households (Beaver, 2024).
Participants described dogs’ behavioural issues as having psychological roots and applied labels rooted in (human) biomedical models of mental illness, using terms including “OCD” and “neurotic.” For example, Jo described her dog Ink’s “consistent” licking and noted that “Ink does have anxiety, which is odd.” Miranda similarly noted, “my anxiety was quite high and, [Bubbles’] was too ... you’re not going to believe this but [he] like, ate twelve rugs. Um, in his lifetime. Ripped them to pieces.” Participants named both genetics and early experience as causes and/or contributing factors. Billy-Bob recounted that “it’s the people breeding of pitbulls that are the cause of maybe some mental health issues because they have cognitive disability ... Because they’ve interbred too close!” Conversely, Billy-Sue said of Spudy, “this dog was so poorly socialized she couldn’t even be in there with all the other dogs ... she was just a hot mess, she just she had no social skills at all and she was terrified.” Unlike the breed-related discourses that positioned concerns as genetic in nature, the above account positions anxiety as a result of problematic or dysfunctional early relationships.
Participants described a variety of interventions aimed at meeting dogs’ needs, including providing comfort and sensory enrichment. For example, Luca offered Bella opportunities to engage in nose work, an enrichment strategy that leverages dogs’ olfactory capabilities, often by hiding scent-infused objects for the dog to find: “She does a lot of snuffling as a form of stress relief.” Similarly, Kelsey managed Bronx’s perceived anxiety using physical comfort: “when he’s feeling anxious, if I pick him up and cuddle with him and give him a big hug, then it helps him too.” Other strategies focused on controlling behaviour deemed problematic, including crate use. Jo shared that in response to Ink’s anxiety, “he had to be medicated for a while and had to start back to basics about ... Crate is my friend [laughs].” Training was also employed to engage behaviours considered more appropriate. Macey noted, “with all of his reactivity and stuff, you’re focused more on like, safety ... like ‘how do we teach you to react properly?’” Here the line between care and control is not clear cut: while ensuring the safety of both dog and human is important, dogs are also expected to conform to human social norms. Behaviours such as a dog’s “dislike” of other dogs are often stigmatized within Western systems rather than recognized as individual-level differences that are commonly found among dogs, including variations in preferences for interactions with other dog(s) (e.g., Power, 2008).
Pharmaceutical interventions were also used even though participants often reported ambivalence about the decision to do so. Parker described initially hesitating to “push medication on dogs” out of concern about possible changes to Rex’s “spunky personality.” However, she eventually started Rex on two anti-anxiety medications, which she describes as effective. Miranda described unsuccessful efforts with anti-anxiety medication for Bubbles:
[H]e was like bouncing. And [vet] prescribed Trazi- I think it was Trazidone … it just made him worse. And then- Prozac or something and I’m like, none of this is working [laughs]. He’s not sleeping I want him to sleep!
Noel tried anxiety medication once for Winnie but similarly did not find it effective, and recounted that she was able to improve the situation by addressing Winnie’s underlying desire: “He comes with me everywhere, he knows how to stay in the vehicle, he literally just wants to be like this with me, that’s it!”
Participants often framed dogs’ behavioural issues as limiting their own activities, such as having friends over, travelling, and engaging in dog-related activities (e.g. dog sports, visits to off-leash dog parks). When asked if she would adopt Bella again if she could go back in time, Luca replied, “100% no ... If they had told me about her issues I also wouldn’t have done it cause that’s not fair to her.” Miranda also expressed regret in adopting Bubbles, framing his behavioural issues as “a burden, right? Lots of time – like a lot of the times, it was a burden ... I had a lot of thoughts of ‘oh I wish I hadn’t.’”
In contrast to descriptions of regret and burden, Parker described navigating Rex’s behavioural challenges as a journey to acceptance:
[T]here were multiple times where I actually, like, had debated, like, should I keep this dog … I would just sit on the ground and cry because there was, like, a part of me that was like: “I can’t abandon this dog,” but, like, this dog is, like, not what I had anticipated.…The way he is not his fault. When he is aggressive, or when he’s reactive, that is his brain chemistry, that is his environment ... I looked at his differences as a hinder. At first. But now I recognize them as it’s not a hinder … It’s his differences. And you embrace them, and he’s beautiful the way that he is ... I remember being embarrassed by him. But now I’m just, like, this is who he is…
Overall, participants constructed certain behaviours as abnormal and problematic. Perceived behaviour problems posed significant challenges for humans, with a few owners describing regret for adopting their dogs and considering relinquishment. Participants described attempting various interventions for perceived behaviour problems, like providing comfort, enrichment activities, training, medication, and confinement. Although many recognized that behavioural challenges might stem from human actions (e.g., problematic breeding practices, poor human-led socialization practices) and some resisted pathologizing dogs (e.g., Winnie was taken “everywhere”; Rex is “beautiful the way he is”), these accounts were often held in tension against a repeated dominant narrative that it was the dog who needed to be fixed, rather than the underlying structures of the human-centered world.
The next two themes address participant-identified physical and mental differences. The first considers the substantial care work that dogs performed for humans in relation to disability, including support around chronic pain, depression, and anxiety. The second explores multidirectional care work, as participants reflected on multispecies trauma and recovery.
Participants described how their canine companions helped to mitigate some adverse effects of their own impairments. Jo recounted the therapeutic effect of a former dog in helping her manage chronic pain:
[I]f I was in a flare-up, [Dot] would lay beside me, and the heat that would come off her- it was like a, a heating pad. And she would not move. And she would lay in the area where I had the most pain, and if someone tried to come in to disturb me, she let them know quickly that it was not allowed.
Others emphasized dogs’ emotional sensitivity. Nadia explained: “Dogs are so sensitive to your emotions,” and so for Daisy’s sake she decided “I’m not going to, be in a dark mood or anything ‘cause that affects my dog. Then pretty soon you forget how to be in a dark mood.” Violet shared similar experiences of how Fergus has helped with her depression: “[H]e’s like one of my benefactors where I know he loves me unconditionally…and I can be like ‘come cuddle mommy,’ and he’ll like come over and lay on me … It makes you think about more than yourself...” Kelsey described how Bronx’s care routines helped her move through postpartum depression and anxiety by prompting her to “get out of the house, get walking, and then I would feel a bit better.” Whereas Kelsey describes Bronx’s helping role as indirect—resulting from his needs, not his intentionality—Melissa saw Honey’s actions as more intentional, akin to an emotional support animal:
Whenever I do online therapy … and it’s really emotional, she’s almost immediately there and putting her head in my lap. Umm, and so it’s her way of showing care but also pulling me out of whatever I might be feeling that’s too intense.
Luca identified a reciprocal dynamic with Bella, which forced her to work through her anxiety: “she feeds off whatever I’m feeling so I have to make sure I’m good before I can take her anywhere.” This aligns with recent research on “emotional contagion” (Byrne and Arnott, 2024) in dogs, and findings that human psychological characteristics can influence dogs’ stress levels (Sundman et al., 2019).
In our study, interlocutors characterized companion canines as providing both indirect care (through care work that benefits humans) and intentional care (through care work performed by them) for chronic pain, anxiety, and depression. Some of this support stemmed from participants’ concern for their dogs’ wellbeing, creating a feedback loop of mutual emotional benefit. However, responses also reflected systemic narratives that overlook the significant care work dogs are expected to perform for humans and the effect of this unrecognized work on dogs themselves (e.g. Cudworth, 2022).
Multidirectional recovery from human-human violence and/or suspected violence against dogs emerged as a predominant theme in participants’ accounts. Participants shared experiences with trauma: their own, human family members, and/or the trauma they believed their dog(s) endured. Several described behaviours and fears in their companion animals that seemed to reflect past traumatic experiences, especially among rescue dogs. Jill, for example, noted Chloe’s reactions to a snow shovel: “[N]o other shovel bothers her ... there’s something, we know has obviously happened in her past ... you kinda wonder what, what all she went through.” Similarly, Jo explained how Ink remains “head shy” likely due to trauma before adoption. Both accounts highlight how perceptions of trauma shape interpretations of dogs’ behaviours and reactions to touch or objects. T described how B, a rescue dog from Mexico, becomes anxious when encountering other dogs on walks, and, during their first six months together, “buried all the treats that the neighbours gave her... She would take the treats and run and bury them in the yard,” a behaviour T attributed to stressful early life experiences.
Three interviewees noted that their dogs demonstrated a particular fear of men, possibly linked to prior trauma. Chloe feared any man wearing a baseball cap, while Macey observed that Kristoff took longer to overcome his fear of men than women. Macey elaborated on the extensive effort involved in helping Kristoff work through this trauma:
[W]e do think he had abuse … it’s a lot of work and a lot of effort and a lot of time and planning and money and like, a lot of work to help them kind of like, work through that.
Luca shared that Bella initially disliked men and would cower, especially if they made quick movements or raised their hands unexpectedly, leading her to guess that “there was abuse.” These accounts point to gendered dynamics within suspected violence and trauma, yet the intersections of gender and speciesism are complex and for this reason have merited deeper exploration elsewhere (see Cudworth et al., under review). For example, we cannot know if dogs who fear men do so due to physical stature, socialized differences in body language, as a result of past violence, or in reaction to their human companion’s own fear of men within patriarchal social relations.
Luca went on to describe the relationship between Bella’s trauma and her own:
I’d say it’s definitely more of a trauma bond than anything… I wouldn’t say that it was a happy bond we definitely bonded when I was going through mental health stuff and when she has her own mental health stuff… then from that we’ve become pretty attached.
This reflects research on the beneficial effects of interactions or relationships with dogs in supporting people’s working through trauma (Lass-Hennemann et al., 2018; O’Haire et al., 2019) and suggests that working through a dog’s suspected trauma may be mutually beneficial and perhaps may have allowed participants to see their dogs in their “dogness.” This was exemplified by Parker, who noted that in her attempt to support Rex and Bert in their anxieties (believed to be due to previous trauma):
[T]he best thing was just to ask for help and just to really, truly understand who your dog is. And work with them and not try to… I think the biggest thing he taught me is that you cannot force them into your life.
Three interviewees also mentioned the supportive role played by their canine companion in helping them or a family member deal with trauma. Nadia shared that she “didn’t know [she] had this capacity for happiness,” because she “had a pretty rocky [laughs] adulthood.” Jake discussed how Anyone supports his wife as she grapples with complex PTSD:
[M]y wife’s in therapy right now, and has had particularly difficult times, and I don’t know how her, how she would deal with it differently if she didn’t have Anyone ... he’s uh, ya know not just a member of our family but uh, a therapy helper as well.
Anyone serves as an informal “therapy helper” as he was not trained to provide emotional support; his family adopted him as an AC who stepped into the role providing therapeutic labour.
Conversely, Billy-Bob, a veteran with PTSD, described the way his formally trained service dogs have helped him to live in the present:
If I was sure that my struggles would follow 'em, well maybe I can learn I need to [pause] I need to not live in that today, ‘cause it was yesterday and it’s gone and [pause] and uh, and I can do it, I’m not perfect at it, but like I said, [the dogs] show me that! They-they show me that.
When Billy-Bob’s wife asked him what role his service dogs fill that she and their son do not, he replied, “the dog doesn’t ask me if I’m okay ... He just looks at me.” This highlights a unique aspect of care performed by service dogs for people diagnosed with PTSD. It suggests that dogs may provide support, companionship, and grounding, without necessitating verbal exchange or the expectation of particular kinds of speech or sharing.
Participants interpreted dogs’ behaviours such as a fear of objects, men, and certain types of touch/movement as stemming from previous trauma. They also discussed how companion and service dogs can contribute to their own or a family member’s healing from or coping with trauma by providing companionship, therapeutic support, and grounding in the present. Reflections around trauma and recovery often focused on multidirectional benefits of the dog-human bond in relation to trauma: humans both appeared to try to meet dogs in their ‘dogness’ and learn lessons and find comfort through working with their dogs.
A final theme from interviews is invocation of eugenics-inflected discourses of intelligence and madness in describing and interpreting ACs’ and/or participants’ own cognitive and emotional states and capacities. For instance, many spoke to their dog’s (often lack of) intelligence, making clear the types of expectations humans impose on other animals and how they should think or behave. Participants described their dogs as “derpy,” “goofy,” “dumb,” “pea brain,” and “chicken nuggets for brains,” often in an endearing way or accompanied by laughter. Following this trend, Jo shared that:
[Spot] has this bump on the top of his skull, and we say it’s his smart button, it’s just stuck on stupid right now [both laugh]. I shouldn’t say stupid, I should say dozy. Because some of the things he does is ridiculous.
Jo corrected herself, perhaps recognizing calling Spot “stupid” might be problematic, and instead found “dozy” to be more acceptable. We wonder at these characterizations and potential parallels to infantilization, wherein seeing dogs as humorously stupid prevents human companions from fully taking them seriously as subjects and agents.
In contrast to the endearing or humorous nature of the above, Clemis expressed gladness that Clark had transformed from a “stupid buffoon” to a “reasonable,” “manageable” dog, noting “he’s so much better now than he was ... two months ago, [he] would have been jumping around like a buffoon and barking ... Now he’s like, [pause] he’s manageable.” This implies that people expect dogs to possess certain types of intelligence that make them easier to control or manage.
Conversely, two participants indicated that overly intelligent dogs could also be problematic. Macey, for example, explained why she doesn’t “get along great” with her mother’s Doberman:
[H]e’s very smart, and that’s the problem. Kristoff is smart, Arthur is intelligent. And the problem with him being intelligent is that he looks at you and is like “that’s not worth it,” like “I don’t want to do that.”
Billy-Bob similarly recounted Spudy as having a concerning type of intelligence, a “mind of his own” because he “learns things very fast... But he gets bored very easy because of that so you need to keep him engaged.”
Beyond perceiving a lack or excess of intelligence in their companions, participants casually described their dogs engaging in behaviours they termed as “crazy,” “bananas,” and “losing their mind.” Macey characterized Kristoff’s behaviour as abnormal compared with the “easy” dogs she grew up with, who “were fun but they weren’t crazy.” Noel, in describing Winnie’s separation anxiety noted: “It’s crazy ... It’s a husky though, that’s just their brain.” M stated that Q’s behaviour led her to not ask friends or family for help with care: “She’s so crazy ... So I don’t like, trust her to be walked by them ... I don’t want to do that to my friends,” positioning Q’s perceived abnormality as burdensome.
Several participants noted the centrality of mental stimulation and/or exercise for ensuring dogs demonstrated desirable behaviours:
Kristoff’s biggest thing is just mental stimulation… He needs like sniffing time and like, training time, whatever, to like really mellow him out. Because if you miss that, he just... can’t get his head working straight. (Macey)
[W]e played a lot of brain games, puzzles, doing all of that to try to make sure [Honey isn’t] losing her little mind. (Melissa)
Discussions about providing sufficient mental stimulation to prevent anxiety, mitigate unwanted behaviours, and keep dogs “sane” raise questions about the captive status of companion dogs, and the extent to which their behaviours ought to be pathologized as “abnormal.” Chrulew (2020) explores the pathologization of zoo animal behaviours such as stereotypies—repetitive behaviours indicative of poor welfare—and enrichment technologies used to curb these “abnormal” behaviours. Drawing on Gruen and Probyn-Rapsey (2018), Chrulew details the “animaladies of captivity,” arguing that what is often pathologized as abnormal should instead be understood as normal responses to the abnormal socio-ecological contexts of zoo captivity. In the context of ACs, Meyer et al. (2022, p. 5) note that western petkeeping norms lead to significant canine welfare concerns, including “loneliness, and unrealistic social demands that can contribute to anxiety, depression, or aggression.” Through a social determinants of health lens, we understand that in humans “inequality produces anxiety... For many oppressed groups, social problems such as poverty, homelessness, and unemployment generate high levels of anxiety” (Fraser and Taylor, 2019, p. 160). Similarly, we question psychiatric understandings of behavioural “issues” that do not consider dogs’ captive environments within anthroparchal (Cudworth, 2011) petkeeping norms, which limit their social and spatial agency and opportunities.
Participants also invoked discourses of madness about themselves, but in a very different fashion. They relayed being viewed as “crazy” due to their transgressive proximity to their dog(s). For instance, Kelsey shared that her husband said, “‘They’re going to think you’re crazy … they’re going to realize that you think [Bronx is] like you’re first child.’ And I’m like, ‘But he is.’” She added: “My husband says that I’m kind of a little bit ‘coocoo bananas’” describing her as “the crazy dog person” and himself as “a regular dog owner.” Billy-Bob embraced this identity, declaring: “We’re the crazy dog people.” Jo similarly noted the work involved in caring for her disabled ACs, reflecting, “Would people call me crazy? Probably. Do I care? No. Ya know, because, umm they, ya know they depend on me to look after them.”
Jo’s account resonates with observations that people who adopt or provide higher levels of care for disabled animals often become labeled as “crazy” (Birke and Gruen, 2022; Trzak, 2020). Feminist animal studies scholars have documented links between ableism, sexism, and speciesism, showing how dominant discourses position women who care for animals “too much” as irrational, faulty, or mentally ill (Fraser and Taylor, 2019; Cudworth et al., under review). This care is seen to deviate from norms of hetero-domesticity (McKeithen, 2017) and intersects with hierarchical dualisms like reason/emotion and individual/population which structure dominant systems of animal valuation (McCubbin and Van Patter, 2020). Probyn-Rapsey (2018, p. 177) notes that to the result is a characterization of close relationships between women and animals as “forming a dangerous alliance: dangerous to her precarious grip on humanness and its psychic corollaries (reason, rationality, transcendence).”
Fraser and Taylor (2019) recount neurologist Charles Loomis Dana’s designation of ‘zoophilpsychosis’ as a mental illness in 1909, which pathologized excessive concern for animals. In response, they call for a feminist animal studies perspective that resists pathologizing women’s close relationships with animals, instead viewing these multispecies relationalities as normal, functional, and positive. Gruen and Probyn-Rapsey (2018: 2) integrate broader political implications, noting the transgression implicit in the “madness” of taking animals seriously, and how dismissing those who do take animals seriously blocks empathy and “distracts attention from broader social disorder regarding human exploitation of animal life.”
Implications and Conclusions
Analysis of our interview data revealed two contrasting patterns: language and discourses that reproduce ableist and anthropocentric understandings of, and relationships with, animals; and transgressive relationalities grounded in reciprocity, vulnerability, and care. We view reproductions of the former not as individual failings but as symptomatic of overarching neoliberal-ableist norms that permeate dog-human relationships in westernized contexts. Ableist characterizations appeared in discussions of animals with disabilities or behaviours pathologized as abnormal, using terms like “extra project,” “defect,” “hot mess,” “burden,” and “derpy.” References to returning dogs with “defects” to breeders or surrendering dogs with perceived behavioral challenges reinforce systemic discourses that ACs, especially those with disabilities or behavioural differences, are disposable and replaceable (e.g. Andre, 2003; Tuan, 1984). Yet many participants reported resisting these norms, a tension that warrants further exploration: whether this resistance reflects the close bonds of those who opted into the study or is more broadly characteristic of dog-human relationships in similar contexts remains an open question. Freedom was sometimes constrained by disability-related fears, and responses to perceived behavioural issues reflected carceral logics of spatial confinement through crating. Such strategies may unintentionally “compound cruelty with more cruelty”, stemming from a failure to link “problem behaviors with psychological distress, boredom, or frustration” (Pierce and Bekoff, 2022, p. 233), despite participants’ deep care for their animal companions.
We read such understandings and responses by human owners of dogs in our study through the lens of anthroparchy, a system privileging human domination, wherein humans discipline other animals to conform to human norms, expectations, and spaces (Cudworth, 2011). Our data analysis reveals difficult requirements placed on dogs, such as being expected to be highly social with humans and other dogs while also remaining content to spend long hours crated or left alone in the home. These expectations are likely compounded by systemic pressures, including humans’ financial resources, ability to work flexible hours, and concerns about safety when dogs deviate from idealized notions of the “good” dog (e.g. Armbruster, 2002). Dog companions are constrained by social conceptions of desirable behaviour, the kinds of lives they should accept, and the consequences when their behaviours are deemed too disruptive or problematic. These consequences can be severe: behavioural issues are among the most common reasons for dog relinquishment to shelters and euthanasia of dogs under age three (Hitchcock et al., 2024; Yu et al., 2021). Our research adds nuance to these findings by demonstrating how people interpret, manage, and reflect on dog behaviours in the light of social expectations and their own experiences. While many participants resisted dominant narratives, emphasizing interdependence, care, and efforts to see dogs as dogs, these narratives nonetheless persisted.
To that caveat, interviews also revealed close accounts of embodied care, recognition of shared vulnerability, and acceptance of difference, extending discussions in the literature of reciprocal, mutual, interdependent care (Arathoon, 2024; Birke and Gruen, 2022; Price, 2017). Participants recognized the emotional labour dogs provided, whether as service animals, ‘benefactors’, or ‘therapy helpers.’ Accounts detailed how human and dog anxiety, trauma, and healing can be linked, demonstrating an understanding of shared vulnerability and deep interconnection. Participants described the ways that they provide physical support and care for dogs, sometimes resisting characterizations of behaviours stemming from anxiety and other states as “abnormal.” This included providing physical comfort and promoting nose work in acknowledgement of canine-specific sensory experiences and coping mechanisms. It also involved accepting dogs for who they are, and modifying their own behaviours or routines, such as allowing dogs to accompany them. Our study extends understandings of embodied care with and by ACs by showing how crip time—a slowing down or speeding up of time often necessitated by productivity expectations and physical barriers within ableist societies (Kafer, 2013), and importantly, a way of “mak[ing] the world a more livable place as we [disabled people] live it” (Rice et al., 2020, p. 216)—also informs multispecies care practices. Meeting the needs of disabled dogs often requires humans to spend extended time on AC care, particularly given the care-burden for disabled and aging dogs and those nearing the end of life. This area is ripe for further research, especially as palliative and end-of-life care for non-humans is not supported in most organizational or governmental policies (Christiansen & al., 2013), limiting how households can crip time within wider economic structures. Care work by dogs remains under-researched, yet our findings suggest that dogs—including both service dogs and those positioned as “pets”—take on significant responsibility caring for disabled humans. An important area for future research is the question of whether this significant caring responsibility might be a fulfilling role for some dogs, and/or may limit time available for dog-being and expression, or “dogness.”
This article contributes to growing dialogues at the intersection of animal and disability studies. It reveals the ways that individuals’ relationships with their companion, emotional support, and service dogs can include both dimensions of ableism and discipline, and of embodied care and recognition of shared vulnerability in ways that “crip kin” (Kafer, 2019, p.5). Such an understanding reflects the messiness of human-AC relationships, which can simultaneously destabilize and reinforce anthropocentric and neoliberal-ableist norms. By closely exploring relationships of care in multispecies homes, we aim to contribute to growing understandings that “anti-ableist approaches to animal ethics and multispecies political theory are possible and imperative, as are anti-speciesist interventions in disability studies” (Jenkins et al., 2020, p. 4).
This article also contributes to societal and academic discourses on canine mental health and breeding for disability, as in the case of brachycephalic dogs, who are often adopted for their ‘aesthetic’ appeal despite having associated respiratory challenges (e.g. Packer et al., 2024). Narratives concerning canine mental health frequently appeared to centre on emotional and behavioural challenges, placing the onus of change on the dog rather than interrogating underlying anthroparchal systems. The same neoliberal-ableist discourse permeates the world of breeding, reinforcing two interconnected logics: first, the selective breeding of dogs to align with human ideals of what a dog “should be” (e.g. “Human’s Best Friend”); and second, the disposability of dogs coded as disabled due to these very practices. The complex logics both reinforce and destabilize eugenicist understandings of aesthetics/form versus ability/function. When animals are bred for “a certain cluster of desirable traits” (Haufe, n.d.), often aesthetic or dispositional, associated or incidental traits may also compromise their welfare, survival, and reproductive capacity. This paradox produces situations where, contrary to the pursuit of ‘purity’ in purebred dogs, mixed-breeds or ‘mutts’ are increasingly valued for health and longevity, reflecting what Kamath and Packer call a “strange incoherence that sits at the heart of the eugenic project” (2025, p. 111).
By attending to these dialogues as they unfold in the home, we ask, What might change for dogs’ mental and physical wellbeing if we took dogs seriously in their dogness, and shifted focus from the anthropocentric pathologization of ability to the societal and systemic structures that reproduce discourses of disability and experiences of disablement? Building on this question, we hope our findings can inform practical interventions. By illustrating impacts on both dogs and their human carers, our research supports veterinary and animal welfare campaigns opposing the systematic harms of breeding for physical traits linked to health problems and disabilities. Insights into how people interpret dog behaviour and enact (or fail to enact) “remedial” action can guide interventions for both dogs and humans, informing advice offered by AC organizations and services. While service and assistance dogs are increasingly recognized as vital to improving human life experiences, our findings highlight the need for trainers and third sector agencies to prioritize dog welfare in formal working relationships. Similarly, the human care service sector might take seriously the ways animal companions provide care for disabled humans and consider how to support reciprocal multi-species care for the benefit of humans who require care, as well as the dogs and other humans who share responsibility for this labour.
This research has been funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Insight Development Grant (grant no. 430-2022-00098), awarded to Principal Investigator Dr. Andrea Breen. The authors received institutional approval from the University of Guelph Research Ethics Board (REB # 23-12-016) and the University of Guelph Animal Care Committee (AUP # 4998).
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