Centring Animals in the History of Experimental Psychology: Pavlov and the Kingdom of Dogs

This article addresses the question of how we can more adequately centre the lives of experimental animals in psychology, in line with the 'animal turn' and subsequent developments in animal studies and animal history. It does so via a specific case study — Pavlov's famous 'classical conditioning' experiments with dogs — drawing on recent comprehensive translations of Pavlov's publications, supplemented by historical-biographical accounts and archives. The article briefly summarizes Pavlov's career before 'following' the journey of the dogs through the various stages of life in the laboratory, including recruitment, housing, surgery and experimentation. Organized according to shifts in the concerns of animal studies over time as identified by Erica Fudge, the article establishes how the dogs have been represented, how they might be said to have agency, and how their agency, and the agency of others, emerges through the various relations that constitute the laboratory enterprise. In combining these elements the article offers an historical account of the experiences of Pavlov's dogs that aims to decentre the usual protagonists (Pavlov, methods, concepts) and recentre the animals involved, and their various interactions and entanglements. In situating the animals in dynamic networks of interaction, within specific material, social and historical settings, a sense of canine agency is enriched and qualified, and any assumption that Pavlov's dogs were interchangeable and passive experimental objects profoundly challenged.