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138| Avigdor Edminster explains and advocates, the experiences of the assistance dogs placed by the agency as well as the experiences and perceptions of the clients, staff, and volunteers help to underscore that separating “economies of affection” from other economies may not be possible, let alone ideal. additionally, opposing “the reality” of the socioeconomic security of jobs or the possession of skills to “the fantasy” and ultimately murderous as well as infantilizing nature of something one might call “love,” as she characterizes it, is at the very least quite problematic. The same kind of “bond” that clients, staff, and volunteers described as essential to a truly efficacious human-dog partnership is that which exceeds the framework of the job market or paradigm of the “career.” While assistance dogs are clearly not solely dependent on “an economy of affection” in the same way as a “pet” might be, the various ways that the relationships between assistance dogs and clients are explained makes any clear distinction between “economies of affection” and skillful work an uncertain proposition. if a client views a dog as “a member of the family” or “like a son,” the familial and emotional dimensions of these relationships exceed the strict separation of work, love, and family that haraway’s framework seems to both take for granted and advocate. haraway’s argument regarding the potentially deadly nature of so-called affection and the place of dogs in a “fantasy world” of human self-absorption and its “pets” is important. however, it is by no means self-evident that the world of “functionality” and its criteria is any safer for anyone of any species . assistance dogs are still ultimately dependent on humans whether they are evaluated by Figure 3. Many clients of the agency describe their relationships with assistance dogs as family. (Source: Ariel Cafarelli, used with permission) Families, Dogs, and Personhood| 139 how well they do their work as assistance animals or by other criteria. The fact that they may well be more needed by those they work with is important, but neither does this fact guarantee their well-being. The traps and dangers of conditional security are perhaps equally present for assistance animals as for dogs whose livelihood is secured by remaining pleasing as “pets.” This is not to suggest that there are not important differences but rather to point out that there are significant similarities. While assistance animals as “working dogs” perhaps do not face the same threats of “outsourcing” and layoffs as other kinds of workers, like all kinds of other workers, canine and human, their skilled service provision does not permanently secure their wellbeing or their ethical treatment. additionally, the notion of “functionality” is an amorphous yet potent characterization that renders the clients of the agency, and many others of us, lacking or partial. The sociologist leslie irvine writes of her fieldwork at an animal shelter that people adopting dogs and cats often spoke of “the connection” that they felt between themselves and the dog or cat that they were bringing home.15 She explains that she puts the phrase in quotation marks because it was the phrase consistently used by her informants, but also because she sees its common usage as “demonstrat[ing] the existence of an emotional vocabulary pertaining to interactions with animals.”16 irvine explains that this emotional vocabulary is part of the larger “emotional culture,” and she asserts that “the contemporary american emotional vocabulary includes rather traditional and straightforward words such as ‘love’ and ‘anger,’ but it also includes newer terms, such as ‘freaked out,’ ‘stressed’ and ‘blown away.’”17 Thus she says, “as new emotional states emerge within a culture, new vocabularies arise to describe them. ‘road rage’ is an example. The notion of a ‘connection’ with animals is likewise a reflection of a particular time and emotional culture.”18 i would suggest that connections such as these have only expanded and multiplied since irvine wrote her book. For more discussion on how connections with animals are situated in time and emotional culture, see Benjamin arbel’s chapter on the reconfiguration of animal meaning in the renaissance in this volume. irvine does make clear that the perception that “the animal liked them” was essential for the adopter’s feelings of “connection.” “The affection signaled a ‘connection’—or at least the potential for one.”19 irvine’s “connection” here is markedly similar to my informants’ use of the phrase “the bond.” and i concur that its consistent use speaks to emergent emotional...

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