Humans and animals interaction is showing promise as a way to provide complementary and alternative medicine for humans. Children have an affinity for animals that could be useful therapeutically. Emotional stress and trauma impacts the neurobiology of children, who are vulnerable given the developmental plasticity of the brain. Some research suggests that neuropeptides and neuromodulators in both humans and the animals are mutually altered through human animal interaction, resulting in the attenuation of stressful responses in both (Yorke, in press; McCabe & Albano, 2004; Uvnas-Moberg, 2009). Human or animal touch, proximity and mind body interaction has been found to contribute to trauma recovery (Brooks, 2006; Perry, 2006; Van der Kolk, 2003; Yorke, Adams & Coady, 2008). Trauma results in the release of the peptide glucocortisoid, or cortisol leading to an ongoing over-arousal of the anatomic nervous system (ANS). Kindling (sensitivity) of the brain, a result of stress, ironically makes the brain more receptive to attunement and enriched environments (Francis & Meaney, 1999; Kramer, 1993; Putnam, 2005). Attunement with others as well as enriched environments is prophylactic, contributing to resilience and normal brain development (Caldji, Diorio & Meaney, 2000; Carter, 1998; Lewis & Todd, 2007; Nelson, 2000; Shore, 2003). The empirical evidence indicates that companion animals impact humans in helpful ways (Friedmann, Katcher, Thomas, Lynch & Messent, 1983; Shiloh, S., Sorek, G., & Terkel, J., 2003; Virues-Ortega, & Bruela-Casal, 2006; Wilson, 1991; Uvnas-Moberg, 2009). Equine-human interaction in particular has demonstrated contradictory results (Bass, Duchowny & Llabre, 2009; Davis, 2009; Schultz, Remick-Barlow & Robbins, 2007). Equine-human interaction can be viewed as a kind of ‘mind body experience’ that incorporates the characteristics of affiliation and attunement into a child’s environment (Finger & Arnold, 2002). A pilot study, multiple base line, single case design of four traumatized children, eight to ten years old and four therapeutic riding horses explores the neurobiological interaction between the children and horses. It hypothesizes that there will be physiological resonance and symmetry in the responses. Some trends suggest the need for further research.

Domestic violence remains a serious social issue. In North America, millions of women are victimized each year, and many of these women are victims of violence at the hand of their intimate partners. A small but growing body of research on domestic violence has shown that companion animals are among the victims of such violence. Abuse of or threats to the pets are used to control, manipulate and emotionally abuse the female partner. However, the majority of this research has focused on the perspective of the abused female partner; the male perspective is missing. Through semi-structured interviews with ten incarcerated men who have committed intimate partner violence (IPV), this thesis explores the abuser’s motivations for abuse of the pet as well as their perspective of pets in the context of a violent relationship. The findings indicate that, contrary to previous research, most men do not abuse pets in the relationship, and in fact have positive relationships with their pets. Just as pets are sources of comfort for women in abusive relationships, pets can be sources of comfort and support for the abusive men as well. When incorporated into violence intervention and treatment programs, relationships with pets can provide a venue for men construct a masculine identity in a positive way, and the treatment of animals can illustrate how violence is not an effective solution.

This dissertation explores the ways in which practices of killing animals in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Canada shaped humans’ perceptions of self and place. Analyzing the multivalent meanings of animal death in wild animal stories, sport hunting, photography, taxidermy, and meat eating, I argue that killing animals was integral to the expansion of settler colonialism in the dominion, materially facilitating the extension of agriculture and industry, and rhetorically legitimizing claims to conquest over indigenous peoples and wild landscapes. But humans’ self-definitions through animal death were not straightforward tales of mastery. Increasingly aware of the disappearance of wildlife from the dominion’s forests, less dependent upon wildlife for subsistence, women and men attributed greater cultural, political, and economic value to the nation’s animals, empathizing with animals and condemning animal extinction. Expressing a sense of guilt over human culpability in the vanishing of wild species, then, humans sought ways of defeating the ravages of modernity by preserving traces of animals in material, representational forms, using encounters with animals as means of defining a sense of self and nation. Fictional stories of animals proliferated, sport hunting soared in popularity, and taxidermied animals adorned many walls. Contemporaries killed animals as a means of legitimizing colonial occupation of newly settled land and asserting mastery over nature, then, but they also regretted their role in precipitating the disappearance of animals from nature. In reconciling this paradox, human and animal engaged in an ongoing process of co-constitution, defining and redefining shifting boundaries of kinship and otherness in a myriad of ways. Such paradoxical meanings of animal death emerged when humans were no longer reliant upon wild animals for survival. As such, I conclude this study by analyzing an important counterpart to wild animal death—the slaughtering of domestic animals as meat. Eating commercially produced meat increasingly defined one’s status as a modern subject within a technologically advanced and civilized nation, the transition from eating wild animals to domestic animals symbolizing a sense of success in overcoming the challenges of settlement in a colonial landscape.

Researchers have demonstrated clear benefits to humans in their relationships with companion animals; however, little is known about how these animals may benefit from their relationships with humans. The purpose of the current study is to investigate potential benefits to a pet of living in a household, as defined by an array of specific pet owner behaviors. A second purpose is to investigate the relationship between self-reported attachment to a pet and dimensions of potentially beneficial owner behaviors on behalf of that animal. Participants in the current study were pet-owning undergraduate students (N = 501) from a large Midwestern university who were surveyed on an array of behaviors they may perform for or with a companion animal. Self-reported attachment to the animal was measured using the Lexington Attachment to Pets Scale (Johnson, Garrity, & Stallones, 1992). Factor analysis resulted in five dimensions of behavior for dog owners (n = 350), named Indoor/Outdoor, Attention, Inclusion, Well-being, and Safety. Four dimensions were found for cat owners (n = 151) and named Indoor/Outdoor, Indulgence, Possessions, and Independence. The Indoor/Outdoor dimension was similar to factors found in previous research. The rest of the dimensions appear to be uniquely important in terms of either dog or cat ownership. Regression analysis using factor scores to predict attachment revealed that 38.6% of the variance in attachment scores for dog owners and 23.6% for cat owners was explained by the dimensions. The results of the factor analysis provide a picture of what human care giving might mean, in terms of beneficial behavior, to the animal. The results also indicate that the basic needs of companion animals are being met regardless of the degree of attachment: low attachment may not necessarily mean poor care. Attachment does, however, appear to make a difference in the life of a companion animal in terms of enrichment. Dog owners who report higher attachment tend to include the dog in family activities, and provide certain kinds of attentions. Cat owners who report higher attachment are more likely to have a cat that stays close by their side, and are also more likely to provide gifts and treats to the cat. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Wichita State University, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Dept. of Psychology. / "May 2005."

Domestic violence remains a serious social issue. In North America, millions of women are victimized each year, and many of these women are victims of violence at the hand of their intimate partners. A small but growing body of research on domestic violence has shown that companion animals are among the victims of such violence. Abuse of or threats to the pets are used to control, manipulate and emotionally abuse the female partner. However, the majority of this research has focused on the perspective of the abused female partner; the male perspective is missing. Through semi-structured interviews with ten incarcerated men who have committed intimate partner violence (IPV), this thesis explores the abuser’s motivations for abuse of the pet as well as their perspective of pets in the context of a violent relationship. The findings indicate that, contrary to previous research, most men do not abuse pets in the relationship, and in fact have positive relationships with their pets. Just as pets are sources of comfort for women in abusive relationships, pets can be sources of comfort and support for the abusive men as well. When incorporated into violence intervention and treatment programs, relationships with pets can provide a venue for men construct a masculine identity in a positive way, and the treatment of animals can illustrate how violence is not an effective solution.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 244-258).

Thesis (M.I.T.)--The Evergreen State College, 2004. / Title from title screen (viewed 3/3/2010). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 50-56).

Despite growing academic interest in the human–animal relationship, little research has been directed toward the political regulation of animal treatment. Even less attention has been accorded to the emergence of the long dominant paradigm in this policy area, namely, the ideology of animal welfare. This book attempts to address this gap by chronicling the early history of animal politics in Sweden with the aim of producing a critical, deconstructive genealogy of animal cruelty and animal welfare. The study ranges from the first political debates about animal cruelty in 1844 to the institution of Sweden’s first comprehensive animal protection act in 1944. Taking a post-Marxist and psychoanalytically informed approach to discourse analysis, the study focuses on how the “problem” of animal cruelty was articulated in the parliamentary debates and government documents throughout the period: What was the problem of animal (mis)treatment represented to be? What kinds of animal (ab)use were rendered uncontroversial? What kind of affective investments and ideological fantasies underpinned these discursive constructions, and how did the problematizations change over time? The book contains six empirical chapters that deal with the most important legal revisions in the period as well as the parallel debates about animal experimentation and slaughter. Two major discursive regimes—an early “anti-cruelty regime” and a later “animal welfare regime”—are identified in the material, and the transition between them is theorized in terms of discursive antagonism and dislocation. Focusing on the conflict between competing discursive logics, the study charts a century of ideological struggles through which our modern attitudes toward animals were born. The book also offers a critical reinterpretation of the success story of animal welfare. Against the assumption that modern animal welfarism progressively grew out of the preceding anti-cruelty regime, the central claim of this book is that the “welfarist turn” that took place in the 1930s and 1940s also functioned to re-entrench society’s speciesist values and de-problematize the exploitation of animals for human purposes.

Increasing evidence illustrates an involvement of stress in a large variety of physical and mental illness. Together with the evolutionary development of the social behavior in humans, the traditional interpretations of the attachment theory and the social support theory underscores the importance of affection, belonging and appreciation for human well-being. Not only can an imbalanced stress system be the cause of severe pathological consequences, insufficient social contact can also hamper recovery. Frequent usage of animals in various settings steadily illustrates both physiological and psychological benefits on both the young and the old, the healthy and the ill. Through the study of neurobiological factors, with oxytocin as a central mediator of social behavior and its  impact in turn on the stress- and cortisol system, this paper examines the possibility of animals to function as social support. The potential of animals to reduce the suffering in patients with stress related psychiatric disorders, such as the highly frequent exhaustion disorder, human-animal interactions might offer a non-invasive complementary tool to current treatment methods.

This thesis is comprised of three studies examining the effects of pet ownership on street-involved youth in Ontario. As a relatively new area of study, issues surrounding pet ownership among homeless youth were first explored qualitatively. The first two studies utilized a series of one-on-one interviews with both pet-owning youth and youth service professionals to determine the major roles, relationships, challenges and effects that pets have in the lives of street-involved youth. The four themes that emerged from both of these interview groups included “pet before self” where youth placed the needs of their pet ahead of their own, physical effects of pet ownership, emotional effects of pet ownership, and the benefits and liabilities of pet ownership. Findings related to these themes, such as the strength of the human-animal bond and pets as drivers of change are discussed. Information derived from the qualitative interviews with pet-owning youth and youth workers contributed to the development of a questionnaire administered to a convenience sample of 89 pet-owning street-involved youth and 100 street-involved youth who were not pet owners in four urban centres in Ontario. This study sought to validate findings from previous qualitative research, provide descriptive information on the pet-owning youth population, their pets, and their human-animal relationship, as well as assess pet attachment based on the Lexington Attachment to Pets Scale. Additionally, pet owners and non-pet owners were compared in terms of depression based on the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale, shelter use and drug use. The findings include a universally high level of pet attachment among this unique pet owning population, providing opportunity for youth to experience not only beneficial emotional and social support, but also the negative emotional consequences of pet loss. Pet ownership was also demonstrated to be significantly and negatively correlated with regular shelter use. Through logistic modelling and controlling for participant gender and regular drug use (of drugs other than cigarettes, alcohol, and marijuana), pet ownership was found to be negatively associated with depression. Using both qualitative and quantitative methodologies, this thesis provides evidence of the beneficial as well as the potential negative impacts of pet ownership for street-involved youth. It also provides the first quantitative description of this population and their human-animal relationship, while demonstrating support for further research into the effects of pet ownership on street-involved youth, and consideration for expanded education and service provision to support youth and their pets among youth services. / Anonymous, Ontario Veterinary College Deans Office