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This paper explores the changing nature of companion animal-human relationships in Britain over the past 30 years. This period has seen rapid change in attitudes and practices towards companion animals, with notable advances in medical treatment, nutrition, and understanding of non-human animal behavior, as well as re-evaluations of the position of animals within the home. Based upon in-depth interviews with companion animal caretakers and professionals involved in the companion animal industry, we examined these changes in the United Kingdom. Major themes were identified: Humanization, Commercialization, Medicalization, Responsible Companionship, and Alternative Companionship. These changes have had largely positive effects on companion animal health and welfare, but also bring new expectations of the companion relationship, which humans and nonhuman animals may be unable or unwilling to fulfill. While dominant discourses of responsible companionship prevail, the process of change is ongoing and reflects emerging trends in human society towards diversification and alternative lifestyles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "pet effect," whereby interaction with a companion animal reduces the physiological indices of stress, varies with respect to fear of animals, companion animal guardianship, type of companion animal, or types of stress. In this study, a non-clinical sample of 223 undergraduates underwent the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) in order to investigate how interaction with a companion animal affected stress levels for people with different levels of trait anxiety, a variable not yet investigated in this paradigm. An index of trait anxiety was taken along with repeated measures of state anxiety, blood pressure, and heart rate. Overall results indicated that interaction with a companion dog reduced stress for all participants, with the effect being more pronounced for those high in trait anxiety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined attitudes toward nonhuman animal welfare and rights and career aspirations in Australian and Turkish veterinary students. A representative university was selected in each country, with 190 first- and third-year students sampled in each. Survey questions addressed attitudes toward nonhuman animal welfare/rights, and intended career. Australian and Turkish students were predominately female and male, respectively, but attitudes were similar between sexes. Australian students rated keeping companion animals and hormonal desexing more acceptable, and food and rest deprivation, pain during slaughter, and using animals in experiments less acceptable than Turkish students. Keeping companion animals related strongly with students' moral values, their decision to study veterinary medicine, and program satisfaction. More Australian than Turkish students wanted to enter clinical practice. Thus veterinary students of these two culturally contrasting countries demonstrated both differences and universalities, such as companion animal keeping, which influenced their attitudes toward animals and career aspirations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Negative attitudes toward dogs are common in Muslim societies. Thus, in studying both past and present Muslim writings on dogs, a contradictory picture emerges, indicating that Muslim attitudes toward dogs have had their ambiguities. At times the dog has been presented as the lowest, filthiest, and vilest of creatures, and at times the dog appears as a perfect role model, exemplifying qualities like loyalty, devotion, and self-sacrifice. There are signs that attitudes toward dogs are changing in some Muslim societies. One such sign is that an increasing number of people in Muslim countries are now keeping dogs as companion animals. The following research will be used to highlight ambiguities as well as changes in order to not only better understand the position of the dog within Islam, but also to provide a very concrete example of how interpretations of religions are not isolated or single but are dependent on context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human relationships with companion animals (cats) and nondomestic, wilder animals (coyotes) are explored in terms of domestic and nondomestic spaces in urban and nonurban settings. What companion animals contribute to and mean to human well-being is considered alongside the perceived need to protect companion animals from wilder animals while allowing them to live naturally, a contested category. Questions related to companion animal/human relationships are explored: do humans romanticize their relationships with their companion animals? Is that to the detriment of other animals' well-being? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humans and rats relate to each other in a variety of ways. Consider the different ways that humans relate to rats in the sewer, the laboratory, and the living room: depending on the location of the encounter, human-rat relations can be characterized as hostile, instrumental, or friendly. Rather than searching for a single human-animal relation, this article suggests that the multiple and contradictory relations between humans and nonhuman animals deserve an explanation. The article argues that the multiplicity of human-animal relations can be better understood by approaching them as situated practices: as practical and precarious accomplishments that take place in specific settings. This approach is applied to the relation between humans and fancy rats. By studying how humans in particular settings come to befriend the same animal that is simultaneously despised and feared as dirty and treacherous when encountered elsewhere, the article shows how these relationships emerge as enactments of situated practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides information on the conference entitled People and Animals: A Timeless Relationship held in October 2004 in Glasgow, Scotland and was sponsored by the International Association of Human-Animal Interaction Organisations (IAHAIO). IAHAIO is an umbrella organization, founded in 1990 and based at the Delta Society in Renton, Washington, to provide a structure through which national organizations could communicate. Its mission is to promote research, education and sharing of information about human-animal interaction and the unique role that animals play in human well-being and quality of life. The conference provided a forum for researchers, educators, and practitioners to share ideas and information. A predominance of presentations related to the therapeutic role of animals with a variety of populations that included children, the elderly, trauma victims, and the disabled. Others focused on legal and social policy issues, improving the care of companion animals, the training of veterinarians and humane education. The author focused on three presentations that made a particularly positive impression on her. The first was a plenary session that described the controversy within humane communities regarding the best way to deal with animal overpopulation. The second presentation described a school-based program that was hands-on, in which children learn about monarch butterflies by raising them, observing them, and planting gardens to attract them. And the third presentation which introduced equine-assisted psychotherapy.

This study replicated the co-existence of dissociation and pet attachment in 113 female veterinary technician students based on a bivariate correlation analysis and chi-square analysis of their responses to the 28-question Dissociative Experiences Scale and an eight-question "pet" attachment questionnaire.The study replicated the positive correlation between pet attachment and dissociation first reported by Brown & Katcher (1997). Also replicated was the finding that significantly more with the highest pet attachment had clinical levels of dissociation than did those with lower attachment. Results compared to a meta-analytic study found their level of dissociation to be higher than participants in non-animalrelated categories.This study suggests that dissociation may characterize one subset of people highly attached to pets and discusses implications for companion animal research and individuals in animal-related careers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on child-animal relations. How real animals occupy an equally prominent position in the child's world; Animals as a force for good; Details on the concept of using animals as catalysts in the treatment of emotionally disturbed children; Resistance to the study of child-animal relations.