•We provide our pets with shelter, veterinary care, love, education, and play. We manage almost every aspect of their lives, from the food we choose to the people they meet. We love our pets and want them to be safe; but there is a flip side to this care: It often comes with restrictions, limited freedom of movement, limited social choices, and constant surveillance.
Watching free-roaming street dogs in India, we can learn a lot about what it means to live a life on your own terms. In our new research, we examine what 45 dog behaviour experts who were trained to observe free-roaming street dogs in India saw. What they saw reflects the tension at the heart of owning a dog: we love them, but we control them.
There is no universal template
There is no universal template
It would be easy to reduce this research to a simple comparison: street cats are free, domestic cats are in prison. But that’s not the point. The point is that there is no universal template for a good cat life.
Free-living cats face serious risks, from illness and injury to hunger and hostility toward humans. We can’t give domestic cats the life that free-living cats have.
Most domestic cats spend most of their lives indoors, behind fences, in collars, in cars, or in cages. They are often taught what to do and have fairly planned routines. When a problem arises, such as anxiety or poor impulse control, the owner may interpret it as a problem caused by the cat. But cat behavior is relational – it arises from interactions between the cat and the human.
Is confinement the cure?
As cat behaviorists have traveled from city to city, they have begun to question their internal models of what constitutes well-being for most cats. Is good care limited by confinement and obedience?
As one put it: When we tell our cats “you can only walk on your feet,” are we stressing them out by limiting their behavioral diversity?
Many have wondered whether their efforts to provide a safe and loving life for their pets are hindering their beloved pets’ development of confidence, adaptability, and social skills. The result can be cats that become anxious when left alone or hiss at strangers. They may also react aggressively to others or panic in crowded places. These behaviors are real and often disturbing. But people often resort to even more confinement and control.
Asking better questions
For participants, the experience of interpreting street dogs competently and independently led them to think about giving more autonomy to domestic dogs.
Some participants had a striking transformation in their thinking. They came to India wondering how free-living dogs survive without constant human protection. They wondered whether some of the common behavioural difficulties of dogs are not a reflection of the conditions we create for them, rather than failures within the pet.
Most participants said that by the end of the tour, the guide’s questions had shifted from “how do street dogs survive?” to “how do domestic dogs survive?” This did not mean that free-living dogs necessarily had a better life. But they use a wide range of skills to survive in the street – from social navigation to finding food – which is what we do for our pet dogs. If domestic dogs are not too constrained, they become frustrated and develop behavioural problems.
As one participant wondered: What happens when you don’t control every aspect of their lives? When dogs are free to make their own decisions, they learn to cope with things.
