“WE ARE CONDITIONED from a young age to think of humanity as somehow separate from Nature. Nature is the blank slate against which humans define themselves, from God’s command in Genesis that humans “have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth,” to modern environmentalism’s call to preserve it. Nature is the passive recipient of our actions; we are the active, vital force that exerts ourselves on it.”
“Dogs trouble this duality: they are of nature but no longer belong to it; they are part of human culture and yet remain wholly alien within it.”
“If, as Georges Bataille once wrote, “every animal is in the world like water in water,” this does not apply to the dog, who exists on the borderlands.”
“To own a dog is to bring wildness into your home. No matter how well trained and docile it may be, the dog will always retain something for itself, a place you cannot reach.”
“Writing on the borderland between memoir and academia, Colin Dayan’s book With Dogs at the Edge of Life attempts to mark out the territory of dogs in our lives, specifically by looking at those places where they are most imperiled.”
“in what category do these animals exist? As companions, with the rights and responsibilities of humans? As property, subject to protection as well as confiscation? As a wild menace, to be controlled and contained? To follow the logic of the title: when we are with dogs at the edge of life, just where exactly are we?”