What can free-living Indian street dogs teach us about how to care for pet dogs?

Srinivasa Krishnan/Getty We give our pet dogs shelter, veterinary care, affection, training and play.

We decide when they eat, where they sleep, when they go outside, who they meet, and how they move through the world.

We love our dogs and we want them to be safe.

But there’s a flipside.

Our care often comes with confinement, restricted movement, limited social choice and constant supervision.

Separation anxiety is a growing issue .

Diagnoses of dog behavioural issues rose tenfold between 2010 and 2020 in the United States.

Dog behaviour specialists and organisations have emerged to help dogs cope with the challenges of modern pet life.

We often assume the long history of domestication has made dogs dependent on us.

But this isn’t true.

Most of the world’s dogs do not live as pets – they roam freely, without containment or ownership.

What can these dogs teach us about what constitutes a good dog life? In our new research , we explore what happened when 45 Western-trained dog behaviour specialists went to India to observe free-living street dogs.

What they saw spoke to the tension at the heart of owning a dog.

We love them, but we control them.