The dog here is at the feet of the human and thus if the relationship between Elizabeth Barrett and Flush is dog love, then dog love appears to include both dominance and submission. And if this is the case, can this really be a vision of love? Should we, rather, recognize Woolf's representation of Flush's agency – his desire to be at his mistress's feet (rather like Lassie's desire to come home) – as simply another idealization of human power by a human: another veiling of domination? Or should we read this image of Flush at the feet of his mistress as an acknowledgement that such hierarchy can, in fact, be love? Is this the best that we can hope for? Is dog love – as Tuan might have it – always a blend of dominance and affection?

I want to attempt in this chapter to trace whether we might be able to live with pets without asserting dominance over them and what the philosophical and ethical implications of such living might be. So far in this book I have offered an account of living with pets that seems constantly to veer in a very different direction. I have argued how easy it is to cancel out the presence of the real animal and instead use its symbolic possibilities. I then considered what thinking about the nature of the pet might offer to the pet owner and traced the difficulties of knowing what it is that one is living with, and why it is so important to assume – imagine – such knowledge.