Pets, people and urban places

Pets in the city:
Living together in urban areas
Melanie Rock, MSW, PhD (Anthropology), RSW
Associate Scientific Director, O’Brien Institute for Public Health
Department of Community Health Sciences, Cumming School of Medicine
Department of Ecosystem and Public Health, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine
Department of Anthropology & Archaeology, Faculty of Arts
Faculty of Social Work
Mathison Centre for Mental Health Research and Education
www.ucalgary.ca/mrock

Welcome!
 Webinar series by University of Calgary scholars
 Information presented is a summary of the
scholars’ research
 Please submit questions throughout the duration of
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Melanie Rock
 Associate Scientific Director,
O’Brien Institute for Public Health
 Medical anthropologist, health
promoter and social worker
 Competitive funding (e.g., CIHR,
SSHRC) since 2004 for human-
animal studies vis-à-vis healthy
cities, communities
 Born, raised in rural Alberta
 @rock_m (on Twitter)

Pets in Canada – By the numbers
 56% of Canadian households
have dogs and/or cats
 23% had only cats
 20% had only dogs
 13% had dogs AND cats
 12% had fish
 5% had birds
 2% had rabbits, hamsters
 1% had another species of pet

Pets in Canada – Money matters

Diabetes  Diabetic Pet-Care
 http://www.flickr.com/photos/qualm/356126823/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/qualm/356126823/

Multi-species families
‘She would absolutely cry when it was
needle time. And that, that I think is
why I was so upset.’
(cited in Rock & Babinec, 2010)

‘I watched him, and
he was real sluggish,
and he was going out
to pee a lot, and
drinking a lot of
water. And, see,
‘cause I got diabetes,
I know that’s what
you do.’

‘I had him crash on
me a couple of
times where his
blood sugar went so
low that he became
very disoriented
and couldn’t walk.’

Diabetic pet-care  Dog-walking

(cited in Degeling & Rock, 2013)
‘It was not just a walking
experience, it was a . . . it
was a total, an all-in
experience… So the dog
might get out of bed and
get you going in the
morning, and you enjoyed
it all the way through.’

 Dog-owners 3x more likely
to walk year-round in their
neigbourhoods, compared
with non-dog-owners in
Calgary

Multi-species communities
 Frequent dog-walkers felt more
connected to neighbourhoods,
compared with non-dog-owners &
infrequent dog-walkers in Calgary

Multi-species communities ?
‘A specific group of people, often
living in a defined geographical area,
who share a common culture, values
and norms, are arranged in a social
structure according to relationships
which the community has developed
over a period of time.’
World Health Organization Health Promotion Glossary ( Nutbeam 1998)

Multi-species public health ?
‘the efforts organized by society to
protect, promote, and restore the
people’s health’
Dictionary of Epidemiology (Last 2001)

Multi-species publics ?
 Concerning the people as a whole
 Performed, perceived, or exists in
ways that are open to all
 Rational thought
 Rational speech
 Rational writing

Problems produce publics,
to seek solutions

Calgary = Model City
for Policies on Pets

Calgary = Model City
for Policies on Pets
Melanie J. Rock et al. Health Promot. Int. 2014;heapro.dau017
© The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email:
journals.permissions@oup.com

Calgary = Model City, yet…
Outdoor signage publicizing public engagement (Photograph credits: Lindsay Burton and Kenda Swanson).

Calgary = Model City, yet…
Source: 2012 Annual Report, Animal and Bylaw Services, City of Calgary
CALGARY -- A judge has
ruled that a man who killed
an Alberta peace officer
who had come to his
property to investigate a
dog complaint is not
criminally responsible.
Dawn Rault, MA (Human Security & Peacebuilding) - PhD Candidate

Summary
People’s pets = family members
•Pets = private property, too
Pets create communities
•Pets may divide communities
Pets participate in public life
•People’s pets influence politics

With gratitude…
Funders:
SSHRC, CIHR, ProvAB
UCalgary
(O’Brien Institute for Public Health, Cumming School of Medicine,
Vice-President Research / Human Dynamics)
Partnered organizations:
City of Calgary, Calgary Humane Society, Meow Foundation
Collaborators & Students (past & present)
Please visit:
www.ucalgary.ca/mrock

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Information presented today was a summary of the scholar’s research and the opinions expressed were based
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