This book provides an insight into the everyday lives and experiences of people who live with dogs as companions; and glimpses aspects of the lives of the dogs who share their homes. It is framed sociologically and as such, considers the various forms of power relations which shape the lives of those kept as pets and their human owners. In recounting stories of companion humans and dogs, the co-constituted quality of life is clear. However, while dogs – as agential beings with needs, desires and a point of view – are able to shape outcomes and change aspects of their lived experience, the world they inhabit is profoundly geared to human inhabitants; and the most privileged ones at that. The book revisits the notion of pet keeping as the interplay between domination and affection arguing that these do not exist as a continuum, but a mesh of complex relations played out in the use of homespace, in the kitchen, the bedroom, the in the public world of park and the street. Those living with dog companions, as well as the dogs themselves, find their lives are muddied, both literally and figuratively; boundaries are tested and recast and the complications of inter-species cohabitation negotiated by all parties.

Through an innovative theoretical contribution, Cudworth conceptualizes human relations with companion dogs in terms of complex social relations that involve both systemic forms of domination as well as nonhuman agency in shaping social relations and social forms.