Beyond Human Bonds
Modern urban canine welfare is often organised around a dyadic default, where regulation concentrates within the human–dog bond. This structure can reduce intraspecific social continuity and increase management of the dog’s behaviour and environment.
The Relational Ecology model proposed here suggests that welfare is not an individual trait but an emergent property of a functional regulatory network. When ecological agency is constrained and social buffering becomes limited, regulation increasingly shifts into the human–dog dyad, raising the risk of stress synchronisation and reducing the dog’s emotional resilience.
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