ABSTRACT
Together with gazing and sometimes voicing, touching is one crucial communicational modality within human-animal interaction. If grooming among conspecifics has been extensively studied, less is known about ordinary practices of (interspecies) petting. Furthermore, it has never been investigated in the ecological setting where it usually takes place: households. On the basis of naturally occurring data collected over a period of six years in a variety of contexts, the analysis will produce an examination of sequences of touching and petting. This search for a proxemic contact can be initiated by both parties, and careful examination of it shows how interactions with animals are mutually organized and sequentially ordered. By extending the concept of “haptic sociality” to interspecific interactions, the chapter aims to show how issues of education, socialization, and emotional sharing with pet animals are locally mobilized while constantly carrying out the fundamentals of the domestication processes.
