Shared intelligibility in interactions between visually impaired people and guide dogs

Walking together, for a pair composed of a visually impaired person and a guide dog, constitutes a perspicuous example of interspecies joint action. Achieving mutual understanding in this context may be a long process. This chapter focuses on one of its fundamental phases, known as “adaptation”, in which the dog’s instructor supervises the pairing of a newly trained guide dog with a visually impaired person, teaching both how to team up with their new partner. Drawing on a collection of video-recorded instructional sequences, this chapter will explore how interspecies shared intelligibility emerges, and how making sense of animal behaviour – for both visually impaired and sighted people – is a practical achievement.