Many individuals across the world own dogs for a variety of reasons. For some individuals, dogs can be viewed as providing the most important relationship in their lives. Others may own dogs for protection, companionship, and even health benefits. Some families across the world view their dogs as family members and a vital aspect of the family unit. This study explored the perceived bond between a human and a dog and how this bond influenced the human‟s psychological well-being. Although studies have been conducted on the human-companionate dog bond, empirical research on the perceptions of the bond between a dog and a human and the influence it has on an individual‟s psychological well-being, falls short. Studies on the human-companionate bond have been on the rise internationally, yet studies in this field in the South African context are scarce. This study contributes to psychology‟s broad body of knowledge regarding the human-companionate dog bond and identifies the important influences the bond has on human psychological well-being. The researcher utilized a qualitative research approach. A non-probability purposive sample was employed and semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven participants. Two participants were male and five were female. All participants had developed a bond with their dog and were able to speak English fluently. Interviews were conducted until data saturation was reached. Results demonstrate that having a human-companionate dog bond can enhance an individual's psychological well-being. Themes identified demonstrate that a human-companionate dog bond can enhance physical health, relational well-being, and mental health. This bond also fulfils specific individual needs which enhance psychological well-being. Limitations of the study and recommendations for further research are identified.

It is difficult to overestimate the social and psychological significance of human-animal interactions. Till now, studies on human-companion animal interactions primarily focussed on positive aspects and relationships, while studies on animal phobias have almost exclusively focussed on spider and snake phobia. The problem with negative human-animal relationships in general, and animal phobia in particular, is in essence a superficial understanding of the determination of physiological changes and parameters associated with its description and treatment. The main aim of this study was to provide theoretical and physiological information regarding the determination of a biochemical parameter which can be used to enhance effective diagnosis and treatment of individuals suffering from dog phobia. A trimodal approach was followed to describe anxiety and fear responses associated with dog phobia. Subjects were assigned to two groups: an experimental group consisting of females suffering from dog phobia, and a control group. The study consisted of three experimental stages: the first stage (resting stage) measured baseline values, the second stage (preintervention stage) measured values in the presence of a dog stimulus prior to the intervention program, and the third stage (postintervention stage) measured values in the presence of a dog stimulus after completion of the intervention program. Cognitive-affective aspects were initially measured by means of the Fear Survey Schedule, as well as by means of an anxiety scale and stressor schedule during the experimental stages. Motor-behavioural aspects were measured as the termination distance of the dog approach during the pre- and postintervention stages, as well as assessed by a psychologist through direct observation of non-verbal communication cues during the behavioural approach tests. The measurement of physiological aspects focussed on the determination of plasma adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) levels during the experimental stages. The main results were as follow: • the experimental group scored significantly higher average scores on the animal, dog, blood/injection and total fear categories of the Fear Survey Schedule than the control group; • the intervention program was effective in treating motor-behavioural and cognitive¬affective aspects of the phobia response; • the effect of the intervention program on the plasma ACTH-Ievels was inconclusive. No significant differences were found between the experimental group's average plasma ACTH-Ievels during the experimental stages, as well as between the experimental and control groups during the resting and preintervention stages. The average plasma ACTH-Ievels of the control group was significantly lower than that of the experimental group during the postintervention stage; • total stressor schedule values suggest that subjects in the experimental group have a predisposition to be generally more anxious and fearful than subjects in the control group; • two-thirds of the dog phobia subjects reported classical conditioning as the etiological pathway; • various auditory and visual cues were found to be the focal point of perception in women suffering from dog phobia; and • group qualitatively evaluated their current fear level for dogs as substantially lower than at the onset of the project. In conclusion, the determination of plasma ACTH-Ievels as a single parameter is not adequate to support the complex interaction between overt motor-behavioural, cognitive-affective and physiological patterns during the treatment of women experiencing dog phobia. / Dissertation (MSc (Veterinary Ethology))--University of Pretoria, 1999. / Production Animal Studies / unrestricted

Thesis (Ph. D.) -- Lincoln University, 2008. / Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D)--University of Washington, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 140-146).

Text in Afrikaans / Hierdie studie handel oor die ontwerp van 'n post traumatiese terapie deur die opvoedkundige sielkundige waar troeteldiere as fasiliteerder ingespan kan word. Dit fokus op getraumatiseerdes wat na afloop van 'n trauma in 'n post traumatiese situasie verkeer, en nie klinies aan die diagnose van post traumatiese stres versteuring voldoen nie. Die ontwerp van die terapie val in vier fases uiteen wat nie noodwendig streng chronologies in terapie hoef te verloop nie. Eerstens is daar die affektiewe fase wat handel oor die bantering van emosies. Tweedens fokus die kognitiewe fase op kognitiewe herstrukturering by die getraumatiseerde en veral die internalisering daarvan. Die fase van voorraadopname maak voorsiening vir die identifisering van psigologiese gestremdhede en sterker modaliteite van die getraumatiseerde. Die kompensatoriese fase handel oor die ontwerp van 'n aksieplan vir die sinvolle voortsetting van die getraumatiseerde se lewe asook inoefeningsaspekte daarvan. Die terapeutiese ontwerp het beslag gekry na 'n uitgebreide literatuurstudie van verskeie terapeutiese skole se post traumatiese terapiee en tegnieke. Oorhoofs word bogenoemde ontwerp in die relasieterapie ingebed. Hierdie terapie le besondere klem op die kompensatoriese fase met die oog op adekwate aktualisering van die getraumatiseerde in sy toekomstige gesitueerdheid. Alhoewel daar 'n uitgebreide beskrywing van troeteldier gefasiliteerde terapie volg, het die navorser slegs sekere getraumatiseerde kliente ge'identifiseer wat sat baat by troeteldier gefasiliteerde terapie. Daar is tydens die studie aandag gegee aan die ontwerp van 'n vraelys wat as operasionele metingsinstrument dien om die omvang van die trauma ten opsigte van die getraumatiseerde se filnksionering, selfgesprekke, belewenis, betekenisgewing, betrokkenheid, seltkonsep, relasies en selfaktualisering te bepaal. Fasiliteerders van die affektiewe fase sluit onder andere soos reeds genoem hierbo, troeteldiere in. Ondersoek is ingestel na die riglyne vir troeteldier gefasiliteerde terapie, en verskeie aspekte soos determinante by die getraumatiseerde vir troeteldier gefasiliteerde terapie, die aard van mens-dier interaksie, risiko's en menslike voorwaardes verbonde aan troeteldier gefasiliteerde terapie, is beskryf Tydens die empiriese ondersoek is gevind dat alhoewel die ontwerp beperkinge het, daar besliste ruimte vir troeteldier gefasiliteerde post traumatiese terapie op Sielkundige Opvoedkunde terrein bestaan / This study deals with the design of a post traumatic therapy that can be administered by the educational psychologist. Pets were used for the first time as facilitators in such a therapy. This therapy was primarily designed for persons in a post traumatic situation after an experienced trauma, who _do not ~fy foc!h<L~!i_ni~_ctl _ cri!~!"ia gf post traumatic _stress disorder. Four phases can be distinguished in the course of the therapy. This doesn't however imply a hierargical order. First of all the affective phase deals with the emotional side of the traumatised person. Secondly cognitive restructuring is taken up in the cognitive phase as well as internalization thereof The third phase of stock taking makes provision for the identification of psychological handicaps and stronger modalities of the traumatised person. A plan of action is developed in the final compensatory phase and it deals with optimal future actualization of the traumatised person. If necessary, opportunity is provided for excercising the newly required skills. This design was developed after extensive literature studies of post traumatic therapies and techniques, and it is embedded in the overall approach of relationship therapy. Strong emphasis is placed on the compensatory phase in view of the traumatised person's adequate future actualization. Although an extensive description of pet fasilitated therapy is given, only certain traumatised clients were identified who will benefit from this therapy. A questionnaire as operational measuring instrument was developed for the purpose of this study. Information as to the traumatised person's functioning, selftalk, experiences, allocation of meaning, involvement, selfconcept, relationship formation and selfactualization can be ascertained via this instrument. One of the facilitators of the affective phase, already mentioned, includes pets. A thorough study into guidelines for pet facilitated therapy, as well as aspects such as determinants of traumatised people as indication for this kind of therapy, the nature of human-animal interaction, risks and human conditions for pet facilitated therapy, was undertaken. The empirical study proved that in spite of limitations of pet facilitated post traumatic therapy, definite opportunity exists in the field of Psychology of Education for this kind of therapy / D.Ed. (Sielkundige Opvoedkunde)

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2015. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Jacques Derrida’s The Animal that Therefore I Am published posthumously first in France (2006) and then translated in English (2008) has potentially become one of the most powerful philosophical discourses on animal ethics to date. His seminal undertaking begins with a personal experience the philosopher has with his cat that one day follows him into the bathroom. What follows is a classic deconstructive reversal when Derrida, ashamed at his nudity in front of the cat, reverses the perspective and asks what the cat sees and thinks when faced with a man – a naked one at that, and how he, as a shamed human, responds to it. Using his well-established deconstructive methods Derrida weaves through the pillars of traditional philosophy and rigorously unpicks our traditional and historical thinking about how we regard animals and calls into question both the humananimal distinction as well as the latent subjectivity on the matter. It is this text primarily that I utilized in my thesis, as well as some of Derrida’s earlier influential works, to show that deconstruction is a powerful and persuasive strategy toward providing a new ethic for (other) animals. As with Derrida, my point of departure is to put traditional philosophy under the hammer by showing how deconstruction as a post-modern tool unpicks the inherent flaws within its structure. I hope to reveal that a deconstruction of the anthropocentric and logocentric attitude of humans toward other animals is necessary in providing a new ethic for (other) animals. I begin first by breaking down the traditional hierarchy of humans over (other) animals – anthropocentrism, logocentrism and ‘carnophallogocentrism’ – as well as, in a separate chapter, a deconstruction of contemporary animal rights thinkers, and replace these perceptions and theories with what Matthew Calarco called a ‘proto-ethical imperative’ (Calarco, 2008: 108), which, I argue, is a foundation stone toward a new ethic. Then, by multiplying the possibilities of an equitable co-existence between human and other animals, I chart a path toward a better understanding and approach to our relationship with non-human animals. In short, this thesis is an attempt to discover, through deconstruction, a way toward an applied (animal) ethic. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Jacques Derrida se The Animal that Therefore I Am wat postuum die eerste keer gepubliseer is in Frankryk (2006) en daarna vertaal is in Engels (2008) het potensieel een van die mees kragtige filosofiese diskoerse oor diere-etiek tot op datum geword. Sy seminale onderneming begin met 'n persoonlike ervaring wat die filosoof het met sy kat wat hom een dag in die badkamer volg. Wat daarop gebeur is 'n klassieke dekonstruktiewe omkeer toe Derrida, skaam oor sy naaktheid voor die kat, die perspektief omswaai en vra wat die kat sien en dink wanneer gekonfronteer met 'n man – en boonop nog 'n naakte man, en hoe hy, as 'n beskaamde mens, daarop reageer. Met behulp van sy goed gevestigde dekonstruktiewe metodes weef Derrida deur die pilare van die tradisionele filosofie en met sy streng ontledings ontrafel hy ons tradisionele en historiese denke oor hoe ons diere beskou, en bevraagteken hy sowel die mens-dier onderskeiding as die latente subjektiwiteit oor die aangeleentheid. Dit is hoofsaaklik hierdie teks wat ek gebruik in my tesis, sowel as 'n paar van Derrida se vroeëre invloedryke werke, om aan te toon dat dekonstruksie 'n kragtige en oortuigende strategie is om 'n nuwe etiek ten aansien van (ander) diere te voorsien. Soos by Derrida, is my uitgangspunt om tradisionele filosofie onder die hamer te plaas deur aan te toon hoe dekonstruksie as 'n post-moderne denkstrategie die inherente gebreke in sy struktuur kan blootlê. Ek hoop om aan te toon dat 'n dekonstruksie van die antroposentriese en logosentriese ingesteldheid van mense teenoor ander diere noodsaaklik is vir die formulering van 'n nuwe etiek vir (ander) diere. Ek begin deur die tradisionele hiërargie van die mens oor (ander) diere – antroposentrisme, logosentrisme en 'carnophallogosentrisme' af te breek – asook, in 'n ander hoofstuk, met 'n dekonstruksie van kontemporêre diereregtedenkers, en vervang hierdie sieninge en teorieë met wat Matthew Calarco 'n sogenaamde 'proto-etiese imperatief' noem (Calarco 2008: 108), wat ek argumenteer 'n hoeksteen is van 'n nuwe etiek. Dan, deur die moontlikhede van 'n billike mede-bestaan tussen mens en ander diere te vermenigvuldig, karteer ek 'n weg na 'n beter begrip van, en benadering tot ons verhouding met niemenslike diere. In kort, hierdie tesis is 'n poging om deur middel van dekonstruksie, 'n pad na 'n toegepaste (diere-)etiek te ontsluit.

This dissertation argues that the destabilization of species categories over the course of the nineteenth century generated vital new approaches to animal figuration in British poetry and prose. Taxonomized by the followers of Linnaeus and organized into moral hierarchies by popular zoology, animals entered nineteenth-century British culture as fixed types, differentiated by the hand of God and invested with allegorical significance. By the 1860s, evolutionary theory had dismantled the idea of an ordered, cleanly subdivided “animal kingdom,” leading to an attendant problem of meaning: How could animals work as figures—how could they signify in any coherent way—when their species identities were no longer stable? Examining works in a wide range of genres, I argue that the problem of species produced modes of figuration that grapple with—and in many ways, embrace—the increasing categorical and referential messiness of nonhuman creatures. My first chapter centers on dog poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Michael Field, in which tropes of muteness express the category-crossings of dogs and the erotic ambiguities of the human-pet relationship. Chapter 2 looks at midcentury novels by Charles Dickens and Charlotte Brontë, arguing that the trope of metonymy—a key trope of both novels and pets—expresses the semantic wanderings of animals and their power to subvert the identities of humans. Chapter 3 examines two works of literary nonsense, Charles Kingsley’s The Water-Babies and Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, arguing that they invert and critique prior genres that contained and controlled the queerness of creaturely life—including, in Kingsley’s case, aquarium writing, which literally and figuratively domesticated ocean ecologies in the Victorian imaginary. In my fourth and fifth chapters, I turn to Tennyson’s Idylls of the King and H.G. Wells’ The Island of Doctor Moreau, two late-nineteenth-century works that explore the destabilization of the human species while still fighting against the overwhelming irresistibility of both human exceptionalism and an anthropocentric, category-based worldview. Throughout the dissertation, I argue that these representational approaches achieve three major effects that represent a break from the more indexical, allegorical forms of animal figuration that were standard when the century began. Rather than reducing animals to static types, they foreground the alterity and queerness of individual creatures. At the same time, they challenge the very idea of individuality as such, depicting creatures—including the human—tangled in irreducible webs of ecological enmeshment. Most of all, they call into question their own ability to translate the creaturely world into language, destabilizing the Adamic relationship between names and things and allowing animals to mean in ways that subvert the agency of humans. By figuring animals differently, these texts invite us to see the many compelling possibilities—ontological, relational, ethical—in a world unstructured by the taxonomical gaze.

This thesis focuses on the relationship of various actors with wild animals, specifically wild predators protected by law, in rural and protected areas of south-central Chile (IX Araucanía Region). It is based on a 12 month period of ethnographic fieldwork, distributed in the Huerquehue National Park, a private protected area ('Cañi Sanctuary') and a small farm close to the Villarrica National Park. Participant observation was developed with park rangers, conservation researchers and small-scale farmers. Most of these were also interviewed through in-depth, semi structured approaches, as other key informants, mainly neighbouring local farmers and government officials. My aim is to understand anthropologically how humans and animals interact, considering various contexts, and contributing to Chilean academia in better understanding the situation of endangered species in the country. The main theoretical points I argue are that human-animal relations are inscribed in a broader environmental approach, regarding classifications about the natural world, humanity's place in it, and their separation. Thus, the study analyses participants' environmental engagements and their relations with wild protected predators and other animals, showing how practical engagements help to 'piece together' the surroundings and other creatures. Considering uncertainty and fuzzy boundaries regarding implied classifications and fleeting experiences with animals, the analysis then focuses on the interpretation of animal tracks and traces and tracking, as flexible and open ended engagements with the environment and its clues, connected to the semiotic concept of 'abduction'. Finally, I return to reflections concerning a fluctuating world, crossed by uncertainties and categories' limitations. Using the concept of 'the uncanny', I explore alternative interpretations of relations with animals and the environment, connected with strangeness and unpredictability, where regular knowledge and ontological assumptions are challenged. I finish by stressing the fertility of being open to complex knowledge, related with a fluctuating and uncanny world that resists well-defined categorisations.

Thesis (M.A.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2001. / Bibliography: leaves 222-229.

Thesis (M.A.)--Denver Seminary, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 52-62).