Excusing Tactics: Social Responses to the Public Misbehavior of Companion Animals

Using qualitative data generated through participant observation and auto-ethnographic techniques, this paper focuses on situations in which companion dogs violate the expectations of public propriety. Seven excusing tactics used by those accompanying such dogs to restore the disrupted interactional flow and repair their damaged social identities are presented. This animal-human interaction is compared to similar social maneuvers used by adults to account for and ease the consequences of the public misbehavior of children, as described in existing sociological discussions.