I did not expect this paper to be about people believing they literally can become pregnant with a puppy from interaction (e.g. bite) with a dog. I was hoping it was a paper on the modern obsession in American culture with owning a dog as a pet. Dog ownership is a phenomenon that feels pervasive in my social circles but not one I feel that I can explain beyond “people like dogs”.
Do a search on "oldest dog burial" and you'll find that humans, from many different cultures and regions for thousands of years, have had dogs in such high esteem (pets) that burying them was important. Theres even some studies that claim humans and dogs evolved together in some respects due to the high prevalence of interaction for 40,000 some odd years. Dogs as pets or even family/tribe members ain't new, by a long shot.
As an American, yea, the USA is awesome, but we're not so awesome that we invented having pets.
People like dogs, and your dog at least appears to like you back. If they don't really like us, their behavior is enough of a facsimile that it doesn't even matter.
I spend more time with my dog than anyone except my wife and kids; and it is pretty close to the amount I spend with my teenagers given that they have their own interests and activities. With that much time together, there is just naturally a bond.
I think the OP might have been speaking more toward the people who feel the need to take their dog everywhere. Things like carrying them in purses or bags, sneaking them into stores where they're not allowed and having verbal or physical altercations when challenged, getting documents (fake or otherwise) certifying they're emotional support animals to take them on planes, and the overall making them a part of your identity.
It's not unlike the anti-maskers or anti-vaxx people presently during the pandemic. The difference being that current circumstances (i.e. the pandemic) are causing society to challenge those people and their behaviors but aside from Airlines banning emotional support animals, there really isn't anyone questioning the crazy dog people.
Dogs and humans have been working and living together for quite a bit longer than modern America has existed, so I don’t think you can chalk it up to that or really diagnose it as a disorder after several thousand years of evolving together the way we have.
Work around animals for a bit and you lean that a sweet critter that becomes pregnant or a new mother are often the nastiest things imaginable. Only to go back again after babies have moved on.
there was that time a woman walking her dog ran into a couple of giraffes protecting a baby and the male did a one-hit kill.
when i was a kid I never was able to hang out with a peer group of other kids but I did run with a pack of dogs and I realized that was why I was much better with dogs than my wife despite the fact that she is a professional animal handler (teaches people to ride horses.)
There was a time when I wasn't sure what it was I lived for and realized I get limitless joy from experiences with animals be it my pets or seeing birds, deer, battling with the beavers that try to plug our culvert pipe or otherwise.
Like all primates, we humans organize ourselves in social status hierarchies.
Your hierarchy position is very important, and though we may not talk or even think much about it, we crave being on top very much.
Of course this is a true Zero Sum Game. Half the people are by definition always in the bottom half.
I think part of the attraction of dogs is that they happily will join your social hierarchy below you. Get a dog, and you get to fulfill that primal craving of having someone admire, obey and worship you.
My former boss had an interesting explanation for this: it's sort of a safety valve.
Trying to control every aspect of your life leads to suffering, so in order to keep such tendencies at bay you introduce some unavoidable chaos - and dogs are chaos incarnate.
I was having a conversation about the pandemic with a friend who is a dog trainer, and she commented that the shelter she works with saw a lot of people get dogs during the pandemic when they were homebound, and now those dogs are starting to come back to the shelter.
Note that this is one anecdote, not well sourced data.
