The Digital Geographies of Assistance-Dog-Human Partnerships

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"Sam is everything to me. Yes, he's a carer to some extent, and a family member. An assistance dog, pet, and lifesaver all rolled into one. He's my no.1 sock puller-off-er, my little furry ball of 'brave' at my feet (and he often lets me borrow his 'brave' to help face the big scary world!) and my giant ball of excitement" (Research participant, Arathoon, 2022).The main role of assistance-dog-human partnership (in my research) is to help with physical tasks such as picking up dropped items, pushing or pulling open a door, or touching buttons that automatically open doors. Despite this, in my research an invaluable benefit was placed on the social and emotional wellbeing benefit of assistance dog partnership by the human partners (see also Eason, 2020). My research thus intervenes in a series of timely debates around the therapeutic potential of human-animal interaction (Bolman, 2019; Gorman, 2019; Pemberton, 2019; Roe and Greenhough, 2021). Additionally, geographers are now going beyond understanding dog training as a domestication process, to understand the spatial, temporal, and material nature of dog training (see Smith et al, 2021).My doctoral research thus makes a substantial contribution to animal geographies and disability geographies by bringing together geographical work on animals and disability, which have been traditionally separate, through exploring the partnership's lived experiences. Through a sustained narrative of how animal and disabled bodies are understood, and how care is expressed as a practice (the 'doing of care') and a lived experience, I outlined how bringing these themes together through animal and disability geographies opens up what we understand as care and the human-animal relationship. The pairing of subdisciplines here is unique and valuable to wider geographical contributions on care and space (see Case for Support for an overview of a I have submitted paper on this). My PhD examiners noted the "richness of their [Jamie's] empirical data, their command of the literature ... and clearly articulated set of contributions to their field(s)". To do this, I engaged with Dog A.I.D., an assistance dog charity which helps physically disabled and chronically ill people train their own pets to be assistance dogs. This charity is unique, and of vital importance, for three reasons: 1) Most literature on assistance dogs focuses on trained dogs provided to humans, not pet dogs being trained to be assistance dogs; 2) Most literature is focused on dogs for visually impaired and blind people; and 3) Due to the dogs being pets, there are several different breeds, sizes, temperaments, and training styles to examine. My research asks important questions about how the relationship between human and dog changes due to the training they undertake, and whether dogs can be considered to care for and about humans. My research highlights the need to explore human-animal interactions, and take seriously the actions of animals as sentient, 'minded', beings.The fellowship will offer an opportunity to continue this impact-driven research through providing me with space to engage with interested publics. The new project will build on and develop work from my PhD thesis, by expanding its geographical scope and moving to a new focus on digital spaces of assistance dog training. My research plans aim to make three key contributions to the literature and Dog A.I.D. charity practices: 1) Fusing together animal and disability geographies (and animal and disability studies) through the themes of care, space, place, and time; 2) Using ethnomethodological approaches to explore human-animal relationships and interaction; and 3) Generating important resources (a report and visual educational materials) that can impact the charity's future direction through evidencing their future grant applications and by influencing their training practices locally with their clients.