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Dog fouling is recognised as antisocial, unhealthy and illegal in England, yet it persists. Much action against dog fouling happens in communities and impacts are largely unrecorded. Here, we report an activist project with primary-aged children in Bristol, England that resulted in dog fouling reductions near schools and reflects on the role of children in effecting social change in their local environment. The paper takes a New Materialist turn, de-centring experience from the individual child to the child in assemblages of more-than-human relations. Photos of children's interventions against dog fouling are presented to explore how they have used material resources and creativity to emphasise the health and social risks of faeces from a child's perspective. This provides a focus on child–faeces–environment assemblages where children adopt methods of activist art that comprise matter including the faeces to convey a new relational ontology of dog fouling and a reifying of the 'problem'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In her book The Animal Estate , Harriet Ritvo reminds us that "animal-related discourse has often functioned as an extended, if unacknowledged metonymy, offering participants a concealed forum for the expression of opinions and worries imported from the human cultural arena'. This paper examines one such metonymy in the early modern period; the animal in question is the English dog. Early modern England was often perceived by other nations to be unique in the variety and number of its dogs, and of these the mastiff and spaniel were most celebrated as products of "English soil'. They accompanied many English ambassadors throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they are mentioned in the annals of the Virginia colony, they were even the only two dogs aboard the Mayflower . The mastiff's courage, strength and ferocity in bull and bear baiting were appealing to those who wanted to advertise English masculine valour, both to themselves and to foreigners, but mastiffs were also criticized for their roughness, stupidity and laziness. Spaniels, the quintessential dogs of the English gentry, were antithetical to the mastiff in almost every respect. Often celebrated for their loyalty and devotion, qualities that made them a model of civility and common interest, devoted spaniels could all too often be described as fawning , showing a false sycophantic loyalty or self-destructive attachment. As a gendered pair, the mastiff and spaniel record a significant uneasiness about the English national character, caught between barbarism and excessive civility. It is an uneasiness that combines regional climate, including things such as "air' and " ground', and more abstract notions of race or breed as they were demonstrated in the animal world as a whole, and it demonstrates that the emerging discourse of nationality in the early modern period was as much concerned with the natural world as it was with human institutions.. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The association between dog ownership and mental health remains unclear. The primary aim of this study was to investigate this association, while the secondary aim was to examine possible interactions between dog ownership and marital status in relation to mental health. A population sample of 68,362 adults living in England were included in this study. Self-reported information on short-term psychological distress and long-standing mental illness was collected. Multilevel logistical models were used to allow for inter-dependence of participants within the same household. In total, 15,856 (23.2%) participants reported the presence of dog in the household. Dog owners were less likely to report long-standing mental illness than non-owners. An interaction was found between dog ownership and marital status in relation to mental health. In subsequent stratified analyses solitary owners displayed increased odds of short-term psychological distress, whilst companioned owners displayed lower odds of reporting long-standing mental illness. Our findings indicate a complex relationship between dog ownership and mental health, and suggest that psychological health attributes of dog ownership may vary based on marital status. Further investigation is warranted, especially longitudinal studies which consider variation in dog-ownership behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents abstracts of articles presented at the 5th International Ancient DNA conference held in Manchester, England from July 12 to 14, 2000. 'Ancient DNA and Human Migrations,' by D. Andrew Merriwether; 'Origin of American Dogs, a Separate Domestication?,' by Jennifer Leonard et al.; 'Analysis of Permafrost-preserved Cat Remains Using Ancient DNA,' by Ian Barnes.