This blog post is inspired by Dr. Sunny Man Chu Lau’s recent BILD piece and her connections between Cesar Millan’s animal-centric approach to posthumanist and new materialist ways of being and belonging in the classroom. I am particularly drawn to these words,

Discipline is not about punishing, but rather supporting the animal to understand boundaries and structures so that they can feel safe and protected, as they respect, and are respected by, their humans in the spaces they share” (para. 6)

I’ll return to the idea of safety and respect in a moment, but first I want to share a story.

During the pandemic lockdown, my partner, Chris, and I joined the many others in adopting a dog. Meet Lychee:

Lychee is a Korean Jindo-mix rescue dog. We received little background information on Lychee’s history. What we did know was that she was taken in by a local dog rescue center 5 days before her scheduled euthanization.

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