ABSTRACT
Liminal animals are suitable models to illustrate the polyvalent role of dogs in eighteenth-century urban contexts. Beginning in the eighteenth century, domestic animals were ones that slept under the same roof as their owners and thus became companions to their human housemates. Pets took on the roles of imagined and yet living companions that served to substitute a nature that was believed to be lost, while simultaneously bringing a domesticated and trained version of nature into the home. As Maren Mohring points out, the early eighteenth century marked the entrance of domestic animals into bourgeois circles and family life. The focus on these exaggerated excesses reveals to what extent pet ownership had developed from the late eighteenth century onwards. Around 1800, dogs were the most popular urban pets. They began entering urban homes as companion animals during the course of the eighteenth century and became an important part of European bourgeois culture.
