‘Basically He’s a Pet, Not a Working Dog’: Theorising What Therapy Dogs Do in the Workplace

Nickie Charles and Carol Wolkowitz
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Nickie Charles: University of Warwick, UK
Carol Wolkowitz: University of Warwick, UK

Work, Employment & Society, 2024, vol. 38, issue 4, 976-997

Abstract: This article takes the case of therapy dogs who visit hospitals, care homes, schools and universities in Britain and asks whether we should conceptualise what they are doing as work. Marx defined the capacity to work as what sets humankind apart from other animals, but more recent analysts see similarities between animals and humans in their capacity to work. Animal work is often defined through training and the acquisition of skills; for therapy dogs, however, training is not required, and their skills go unrecognised. Drawing on a study of therapy dog visits to a British university and using a methodology that attends to the experiences of the dogs as well as the human actors, we argue that therapy dogs engage in emotional work and body work and that the concepts of ‘encounter value’ and ‘feeling power’ need to be deployed to theorise the work they are doing.

Keywords: animals work; body work; emotional work; encounter value; feeling power; therapy dogs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:woemps:v:38:y:2024:i:4:p:976-997

DOI: 10.1177/09500170231161495

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