Realizing multispecies justice: a (dog) walk in the park?

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ABSTRACT A growing body of literature is concerned with the city as a site of human and nonhuman (henceforth “animal”) entanglement. These findings have contributed to a relational ethics that calls for multispecies justice and care based on “our” shared connectivity. However, the factors impacting how mundane animal encounters are experienced, conflicted, and negotiated remain underexplored. Examining leisurely dog walks in London’s urban spaces, moments of unstructured human–animal and animal–animal encounters, and the impact of these on the moral geographies of dog guardians are investigated. “Dog-walk-and-talk” interviews with experienced dog guardians highlight how animal encounters become moments of ethical contemplation. These ethical reflections are deepened and complicated by the intimate and reciprocal care relations that guardians often share with their companion dog(s). On the one hand, guardians experienced embodied, ethical, and political encounters with animal urban denizens. This is conflicted by practices of detachment that can also follow encounters with so-called pest species. Thus, the stories told by urban dog walkers hint that the human–canine relationship impacts the realization of one’s moral obligation towards other-than-canine animals. The research therefore revisits the topic of multispecies justice and animal ethics and how it might be realized.