Dr Nora Schuurman (University of Turku, Finland) has written a blog arising out of her research project, Landscapes of Interspecies Care: Working the Human–Animal Boundary in Care Practices https://laica.utu.fi/. This project explores human–animal care in 21st century Finland, looking at everyday practices of care and between humans and animals. Here she writes about transnational animal rescue practices

 

In Finland, rescuing and rehoming unwanted animals from abroad has become more widespread in the 2010s, reflecting awareness of animal welfare and the increasing popularity of pet-keeping. Specific animal rescue organisations transport animals, mostly dogs, from Eastern and Southern European countries to more affluent countries for purposes of adoption. In their country of origin, these animals may have been abandoned or spent all their previous life in the street. Adoption homes are usually searched for by online advertising and, when a new home is found, the animals are escorted to the country of destination where they are taken to their new homes.

In a recent study I investigated adopters’ experiences of first encountering a rescue dog and the process in which the newly adopted animal adapts to life in the home as a member of the family, which often includes not only humans but also other non-humans, usually dogs (Schuurman 2019). For this purpose, I studied blogs published by adopters of rescue dogs in Finland. The aim was to see how the authors of the blogs experienced the task of encountering and accommodating a rescue dog, including training and re-training the dog, making them learn how to live in a human home and to feel safe with their new family and surroundings.

I approached the blogs as their authors’ attempts at interpreting the dog–human relationship and communicating to the readers, illustrating the culturally shared idea of living with a dog, including expectations of attachment and control. Exploring transnational animal rescue is interesting as it reveals the taken-for-granted conceptions and practices of Western pet-keeping culture: how does the new owner respond to the actions of an animal with a background in the street or an animal shelter? I concentrated on the early phases of adoption when the dog has already been chosen for adoption and transported to the new country and home. Here, I discuss examples taken from one of the blogs studied, recounting the arrival of the rescue dog Remu and his first days with his new human–dog family (http://kanelijaremu.blogspot.fi/).

In the case of transnational animal rescue, adopters seldom meet the animal before the decision to adopt and the arrival of the animal. The first encounter with a rescue dog typically takes place at the airport or a petrol station, where the dog is brought when arriving in Finland. Here, adopters come to meet their future canine companion. There is a lot at stake in the first encounter, which marks the beginning of the relationship and the slow process of learning to know each other. Expectations as to what will happen vary according to the adopter’s previous experience with dogs and information given by the rescue organisation. The encounter can be complicated, because the situation, the place and the people involved are all unknown to the dog:

At the airport Remu had to be lifted out of the transport box, he would rather have stayed there. He was not interested in people and did not want treats. He just seemed to calculate possible escape routes. When we left the airport, I carried Remu to the car where he froze, resigning himself to his fate.

In the case of rescue animals with little or no previous experience of interacting with humans, mutual communication has to start from the beginning, and anticipation of their behaviour can be difficult. Furthermore, when dogs are taken to their new home, they enter a space of control and a group of strange individuals, human and non-human. The actions of animals in such a situation stem from their emotional states as well as their interpretations of the actions of others and the environment. One of the most important criteria for a rescue dog in successfully living in a human home is how the dog will get on with other dogs in the family:

After Kaneli snarled at Remu once through the dog gate, [Remu] was in the bedroom in a second, under our bed. And there he stayed, despite persuasions, for the next 14 hours. Beforehand, I had naturally built 6 different hiding places and nests where Remu could have gone (the hall closet, bathroom, transport box, own bed, big cushion, under the desk). He found what I had not come to think about at all. Because there was nothing to be done about the situation, we decided that Kaneli would sleep on the living room couch with my husband and I in the bedroom with Remu.

In their first encounter with each other, the dogs are brought too close for comfort, with unexpected consequences. The dogs solve, in their own ways, a situation that they perceive as unbearable. For the human, what happens is a failure in managing care, but it is also about losing control and therefore challenging the expectations of living with dogs and managing their behavior in an appropriate way. The situation continues in the excerpt below, epitomizing how the space of the home is managed by both humans and dogs:

Kaneli has accepted now that there is a new bloke living in the hall, but only in the hall. As soon as Remu’s head appeared in the living room, we heard a deep “don’t come to the living room” growl. Remu backed away. I closed the gate and handed out dog treats on both sides, and Kaneli watched Remu calmly from less than half a metre away. When Remu had had enough, he retreated back to his box and Kaneli, too, went back to sleep in the living room. This resulted in a theme for the rest of the day: “Remu thinks Kaneli is lovely and it would be fun to spend time with him, Kaneli thinks it would be fun if Remu stayed immobile in his box”.

Building a relationship with a rescue dog who is not necessarily accustomed to life with humans also involves moving together outside the home, where the distance between the human and the dog can become an issue. This is visible at walks with the dog reported in the blog. In the last quote below, the author, interpreting the dogs’ feelings and messages, describes the routine she has developed between herself and the dog, in order for the dog to feel safe with her. The routine is understood by both, even if the author is not completely aware of what it is in her own actions that the dog follows:

It is really scary to be too close to a human who stays still, only when I am at about three metres from him, and when I’m walking, Remu thinks I am ok. So from now on, we will choose our walks so that we won’t have to stop. [. . .] Although I am really scary close-up, we already have our first communicative signal. My “tsk-tsk” sound means that we will now change direction a bit, and then Remu turns to look from where he is four metres away and changes direction to where I am pointing. I am not sure whether he follows the direction of my body or the movement of my hand, but the message hits home and we go on with a slack leash.

A successful encounter with a rescue dog involves practices in which the rescue dog is gradually introduced to the environment in which they are expected to live. This includes careful interpretation of the human–dog communication and the ways in which the dog interprets human action.

For rescue dogs and their adopters, the process of introducing the dog to their new life is challenged in situations that prove to be difficult for the dog to manage and are sometimes understood to cause behaviour problems. For a rescue dog, with a life history possibly without human companionship and control, a situation where their actions may not be tolerated by humans is completely new. The actions of a rescue dog cannot be interpreted as separate from their life history, all that they have experienced and learned about the world and other actors in it, humans and animals. Accommodating such a dog in the family is a learning process in which the (unknown) past of the dog has to be taken into account in order to understand, at least to some extent, what the dog’s experiences of the new home might be like. For adopters of rescue dogs from abroad, learning to understand their dogs is a rather slow but rewarding process that – as the authors of the blogs confirm – often leads to an enduring relationship.