What Training My Chaotic Dog Taught Me About Power, Control – and Human Beings

If you think about it, the concept of dog ownership is a strange one—as William Davies puts it, “we have, for the most part successfully integrated a vast number of autonomous, non-human entities into a human system of rights and wrongs.” But this integration is not always smooth, as Davies finds out when he tries to train his own dog, an unruly boxer named Dusty. As a sociologist, Davies is fascinated by modern dog training and what control really means. And so, amidst the chaos and embarrassment Dusty causes, he reflects on what our attempts to train dogs reveal about power and responsibility.

We made a mistake: we got a boxer. These are some of the unsolicited comments you receive from strangers in the street when walking a boxer. “Aaaah, boxers – they’re all mad!” “Don’t worry, mate, she’ll calm down – when she gets to 10!” “Give up, mate, boxers have got minds of their own!” Old-timers will come up to you with a faraway look in their eye and tell you that they “grew up with boxers”, but “you don’t see them much these days”, something for which they don’t know the reason, but I suspect I now do. Dog experts and trainers will tell you that a boxer is not a good first dog (Dusty was our first dog). There aren’t many breeds that are the focus of their own specialist training programme as boxers are (for example, Bombproof Boxer).