Labors of love: Work, labor, and care in dog–human relations

This paper suggests that the role of “pet” might be understood as a form of labor, and a condition shaped by human work. Drawing on an empirical study of everyday lives with companion dogs it considers how the work of humans outside the home impacts the lives of people and dogs; and the kinds of carework undertaken by both people and dogs in multispecies homes. The concept of paid work has been foundational in sociology while understanding work as unpaid, privatized and invisible reproductive labor has been secured through feminist interventions. Work, has been assumed to be human exclusive, but this has been recently challenged by research on animal work. This paper deploys (eco)feminist care theory to consider how far work, labor and care might be productive categories in understanding a hitherto neglected area - relationships with companion dogs.