A Matter of Leashed Concern: Dogs' Health with Jessica Pierce

What started out as a difficult conversation about the inevitability of a dog’s death gradually turned into a discussion on how dogs and humans can live better. In the last interview episode of season 7, Claudia talks with philosopher and bioethicist Jessica Pierce about their experiences of living with dogs and how to give meaning to multispecies cohabitation.

“End of life planning begins when they’re a puppy. You get a dog and their life will most likely fall entirely within your life. It’s hard for people to plan [for a dog’s death] because you have to look into the abyss”, Jessica reflects after talking about the death of her dog, Odie.

But what does it mean for a dog to die well? Hospices that offer end-of-life services to humans are often able to ask their clients about their wishes and needs before they pass away. As long as bark-to-word translators remain confined to the realm of science fiction, the consensus is that we simply cannot entirely know a dog’s wishes. Jessica argues, however, that dogs talk to us all the time but that we are rarely open to listening.

Let me present you with an example: Consider a couple that lives with a baby and a dog. Neither the baby nor the dog are able to put their desires into words and resort to making loud sounds to get the couple’s attention. The couple might respond to the baby with curiosity and patience, holding the baby, feeding them, playing with them, or doing anything else within their power to find out what the baby needs. A barking dog, however, might face annoyance, punishment, or get ignored despite employing the same strategy. Even though these responses may be understandable, Jessica expresses concerns about this double standard. We do everything we can to understand a baby despite the language barrier, while a dog’s attempts at communicating leads to frustration.

“One of the narratives that seems to really have a grip on us is that dogs have evolved to be our friends. And that we have shaped their behaviour and their morphology like we’re this hand of God reaching down and manipulating their genes to get just what we want behaviourally and morphologically” - Jessica says.

As dog owners, Jessica and Claudia both have a nose for dog behaviour and they seem to agree: Dogs are having a bad time, and this might be related to how we treat dogs, Jessica suggests. That dogs are increasingly more anxious, have more behavioural issues, and cannot sometimes stop barking might just be responses to our interactions with them. After all, it is in a dog’s nature to roam, to bark, and to interact with other dogs which are all behaviours that we limit through confinement in cages, muzzles, and extensive training regimens to teach them to be the ‘perfect dog’.

Training is one of the ways in which we connect with dogs, it is also how we control them. Sometimes our pursuit of 'the perfect dog' harms them emotionally, socially, and physically.

This presents us with a difficult challenge because the very essence of keeping a pet goes against  the freedom that dogs ought to have. In response, some might vehemently advocate the abolishment of petkeeping altogether, but Jessica offers a more gentle solution. She offers us “guiding principles of how we can improve our interactions” in the form of three C’s:

• Care: No one questions that we ought to provide adequate care for canine companions, but we often forget that this includes keeping in mind their social and emotional needs.

• Curiosity: Today, dog owners have access to near infinite information about dog ownership and care, but Jessica suggests we sometimes ought to forget what we know. Instead, approach your dog with curiosity. Why do dogs bark? Why do they interact with humans and their environment? A recent study by Holly Molinaro and Clive Wynne shows that, even when humans attempt to understand dogs, we tend to misread and misunderstand what dogs try to tell us — if there even is an attempt. Every dog is different, and curiosity allows us to better understand them.

• Collaboration: Whenever a dog exhibits an unwanted behaviour, we implicitly expect them to change. One could argue that it should reasonably be a 50-50 interaction. If we are caring and show curiosity, surely we can budge ourselves too.

For scholars in humanities, social sciences, and other disciplines, it has become widespread practice to consider nonhumans as agentic research participants. And yet, Jessica’s three C’s extend this broader perspective on animals into the home. Why wouldn’t we consider pets as agentic housemates with which cohabitation entails considering them as equals? Even though furry roomies do not pay rent in a monetary form, I think many of us would agree that cuddles and head scratches would also suffice.

The three C’s that Jessica presents not only offer a different way of coexisting, but also connect neatly to the themes explored throughout this season. In episode 3, Mariam Motamedi-Fraser argues that our way of coexisting with dogs, and how we shape the course of their lives, is heavily influenced by scientific developments and how scientific knowledge is in turn translated into practice. Jessica and Mariam would probably agree  that scientific knowledge has its limitations as dogs are not confined to books, labs, and training modules but live in vast, complex networks with other dogs, other pets, humans, and all kinds of nonhuman actors. The curiosity that Jessica argues for helps us pay closer attention to dogs beyond traditional forms of knowledge and instead allows us to care for and collaborate with them as individuals.

While Jessica mainly talks about domestic dogs, these three C’s are just as applicable to free-roaming dogs as explored in depth in episode 4 with Anindita Bhadra. In fact, it raises a provocative question: What might public dog-human relations look like if the focus lies on cohabitation rather than eradication?

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Herre de Bondt completed his PhD in anthropology at Roehampton University in London in 2025 for which he dove into the world of bird feeding in gardens and public urban spaces. With a background in anthropology and urban studies, Herre conducted various multispecies research projects ranging from crows in Tokyo, to gulls in The Hague, and to rats in Amsterdam. Previously a fellow with the Animal Turn, Herre now volunteers as an assistant content producer for the show.

You can connect with Herre via Twitter (@HerreBondt).Learn more about our team here.