The Digital Geographies of Assistance-Dog-Human Partnerships

“萨姆是我的一切。是的，他在某种程度上是我的照顾者，也是我的家庭成员。辅助犬、宠物和救星集于一身。他是我的no。我的袜子拉脱者，我脚上毛茸茸的‘勇敢’球（他经常让我借他的‘勇敢’来帮助我面对这个可怕的世界！）和我的巨大的兴奋球”（研究参与者，马拉松，2022）。在我的研究中，狗与人的助手关系的主要作用是帮助完成一些体力任务，比如捡起掉落的东西，推开或拉开门，或者触摸自动开门的按钮。尽管如此，在我的研究中，人类伴侣对辅助犬伙伴关系的社会和情感健康带来了无价的好处（另见Eason， 2020）。因此，我的研究介入了围绕人与动物相互作用的治疗潜力的一系列及时辩论（Bolman, 2019; Gorman, 2019; Pemberton, 2019； Roe和Greenhough， 2021）。此外，地理学家现在正在超越将狗训练理解为驯化过程，以理解狗训练的空间、时间和物质性质（见Smith等人，2021）。因此，我的博士研究通过探索合作伙伴的生活经验，将传统上分开的动物和残疾地理学工作结合在一起，为动物地理学和残疾地理学做出了重大贡献。通过对如何理解动物和残疾身体的持续叙述，以及如何将护理作为一种实践（“护理”）和生活经验来表达，我概述了如何通过动物和残疾地理将这些主题结合在一起，从而打开了我们对护理和人与动物关系的理解。这里的子学科配对是独特的，对于在护理和空间方面做出更广泛的地理贡献是有价值的（参见案例支持，概述了我提交的一篇关于这方面的论文）。我的博士导师注意到，“他们（杰米的）经验数据丰富，他们对文献的掌握……并明确阐述了对各自领域的贡献”。为了做到这一点，我加入了Dog A.I.D，这是一个帮助残疾人和慢性病患者训练他们的宠物成为辅助犬的慈善机构。这种慈善是独特的，也是至关重要的，原因有三：1)大多数关于辅助犬的文献关注的是提供给人类的训练有素的狗，而不是被训练成辅助犬的宠物狗；2)大多数文献关注的是视障人士和盲人的狗；3)由于狗是宠物狗，所以有几种不同的品种、大小、气质和训练方式需要检查。我的研究提出了一些重要的问题，比如人与狗之间的关系是如何因他们接受的训练而改变的，以及狗是否可以被认为是关心和关心人类的。我的研究强调了探索人类与动物互动的必要性，并认真对待动物作为有知觉、有“头脑”的生物的行为。该奖学金将通过为我提供与感兴趣的公众接触的空间，为我提供继续这种影响驱动型研究的机会。新项目将建立和发展我博士论文的工作，扩大其地理范围，并将新的重点放在辅助犬训练的数字空间上。我的研究计划旨在为文献和犬类a.i.d慈善实践做出三个关键贡献：1)通过关怀、空间、地点和时间的主题，将动物和残疾地理（以及动物和残疾研究）融合在一起；2)运用民族方法学方法探索人与动物的关系和互动；3)生成重要的资源（一份报告和视觉教育材料），这些资源可以通过证明他们未来的拨款申请和影响他们在当地与客户的培训实践来影响慈善机构的未来方向。

"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.