The Theology of Dog Training in Vicki Hearne’s Adam’s Task

• Main Author: Katharine Mershon
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2019-01-01
• Series: Religions
• Subjects: animal ethics; animal studies; dog training; redemption; gender and animals; Donna Haraway; Vicki Hearne; the Book of Genesis; Adam and Eve; sin
• Online Access: http://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/10/1/25

“The Theology of Dog Training” demonstrates the rich and surprising ways in which religion plays a primary role in how people make sense of their relationships with their companion animals. In the first sustained analysis of Adam’s Task in religious studies, I argue that feminist writer and dog trainer Vicki Hearne describes a form of relational redemption that allows for the restoration of a prelapsarian language between humans and animals; a recovery of a time before humans sinned against God and subsequently lost their authority over animals. Training, which begins with the act of naming a dog and bringing them into the moral life, is Hearne’s attempt to restore what was lost in the Fall for both humans and animals. In making this argument, I join a growing community of scholars who are committed to bringing animal studies to the academic study of religion. In addition to analyzing religion as it occurs in non-institutional spaces, I examine phenomena that would not necessarily be considered religious, but, as I show, make ethical and religious claims on human–canine relationships. By investigating institutions, texts, and practices in contemporary America that traditionally have not been identified as religious, my article shows how religious beliefs and forms can help us build an ethics of multispecies relations.