Safe in Unsafe Places: Leisure, Passionate Avocations, and the Problematizing of Everyday Public Life

Dair L. Gillespie
University of Utah

Ann Leffler 1
Utah State University

Elinor Lerner
Stockton State College

Leisure is often distinguished from and considered subsidiary to some other world, the "real" world. This paper explores how participation in passionate avocations - leisure pursuits both generating and requiring heavy personal identity investments - affects the public interface between the "real" world and the alternate world of the passionate avocation. We use the world of dog sport enthusiasts to problematize polar conceptualizations of certain important aspects of social life. In particular, we examine shifting experiential definitions of "safe" and "unsafe" public places by looking at how participation in dog sports shapes both the possibility of certain kinds of public interactions and also participants' public identities - how they define themselves and are defined in public. The data come from four major sources. First, since 1992 we have interviewed approximately 50 enthusiasts in various dog sports. Second, by training and showing our own dogs, we enjoy participant observer access to a variety of dog-related activities and people. Third, we are involved in several Internet groups about dogs. Finally, using a technique Denzin (1989) terms "auto-ethnography," two of the authors toured the country for nine months, attending dog sports events and training sessions and conducting interviews.

When Worlds Collide: Hobbyist Identities in Public Space

Our new hobbyist identities changed our patterns of interaction with the real world. The frequency and kinds of interactions we had in public places shifted, as did the way we "felt" about those interactions, the social categories of persons with whom we interacted, how we (and others) defined the situation, and who became socially defined as "folk" versus stranger, friend vs. problematic encounter. We do not know, of course, the degree to which the specifics of the shifts depended on the fact that our hobby objects were dogs in general or Rottweilers specifically. In this paper, we will simply report the shifts, hoping that future research can clarify which kinds of hobbies and hobby objects make which kinds of differences.

The changes in public identity we experienced are not predicted in the literature. Various studies report that being accompanied by a dog in public places facilitates social contact and lubricates social interaction (Gardner, 1980; Messent, 1983, 1985; Dunbar, 1987; Hart, Hart & Bergen, 1987; Eddy, Hart & Boltz, 1988; Manor, McCurdy & Crain, 1988; Mader, Hart & Berger, 1989; Robins, Sanders & Cahill, 1991; Rossbach & Wilson, 1991; Edney, 1992). Some studies even recommend providing dogs for social isolates (Corson & O'Leary, 1981; McCullouch, 1983; Silverman, 1985). While we had many encounters supporting these findings about the positive effects of being accompanied by a dog, our overall experience suggests a much more complex effect. Sometimes being accompanied by dogs facilitated social contact between us and the people we met in public places. Sometimes it did the reverse.

Dogs as Impediments to Social Interaction: Safe in Unsafe Places

Being accompanied by hobby dogs necessarily exposes travelling enthusiasts to potentially unsafe situations, environments and times. Being out at night, around strangers, and in "bad" neighborhoods or isolated places is anxiety provoking for many people. It is particularly problematic to women unaccompanied by a man, for underlying any woman's encounter with strange men in unfamiliar places at dangerous times is always the possibility of sexual violence (Bart & Moran, 1993). This possibility is unavoidable for dog hobbyists, most of whom are women, because dog hobbies involve travel to unfamiliar places, because of the need to find a motel that accepts dogs, and because the dogs must be "run." An example from the field notes:

It is a stormy winter night. I am running the two dogs alone on an isolated beach at the New Jersey shore. The moonlight shines over my shoulder, casting a long shadow on the sand. The dogs' black coats make them invisible in the gloom. This would be a great place to make a stalker movie; it looks menacing in the dark with the moon, sand, and fog. Large shadows suddenly join mine. Two white men are hulking above me on the dunes which separate us from sight of the town. "Hi," I say, thinking they too probably are running dogs. They make no response, only keep moving toward me. Danger alert! I turn the dogs so the men can see them, and detach their leashes. As I hoped, the dogs pull forward. Holding onto their collars, I try to look as though barely containing them from attack. This works. The men flee, one muttering, "Just keep those dogs away from me," the other prayerfully chanting, "Nice dog, nice dog." (AL, field notes, 3/3/94)

The important point here is that in the end the men did make conciliatory noises and they did move away. They had lost their sense of public safety, while for the author the definition of the situation had reverted to "safe" place, time, interaction. As participants and potential victims in ambiguous situations like these, women never know if such encounters are truly threatening, or if the men are getting pleasure from menace but will not actually attack, or if they are innocently friendly. This ambiguity, the fact that women cannot afford to be unsuspicious in encounters with strangers at "dangerous" places and times, makes the issue of defining "safe in public" a continual concern. Depending on the political climate, the same is true for other at-risk groups, for instance black people in white territory (Griffin, 1977).

A number of similar experiences occurred throughout our months of travel with the dogs, ranging from silent hulking night encounters like the one described above to an assault on the trailer one night in an isolated California campground by a carload of white men. In each case the presence of the dogs changed the definition of the situation for us from "unsafe" to "safe" and for them from "safe" to "unsafe." No doubt one influence on the situation was a current social definition of the dogs' breed. Rottweilers are often typecast in popular media and in apocryphal urban legends as the canine villains of the day, like Doberman Pinchers, St. Bernards (Hobbs, 1995), and German Shepherd dogs before them. The joy of being accompanied in such situations by dogs, at least by dogs stereotyped as dangerous, is that, by virtue of the dogs' presence, the potential victims have the power to turn the tables on the potential attackers. Now they cannot know if the dogs are truly dangerous or if the potential victims are just getting pleasure by redefining the place, situation, and time as "unsafe" for the potential attackers. Such is the thrill of canine counter- terrorism.

Being a hobbyist in public, then, or at least a hobbyist with one's hobby objects visible and socially defined as threatening, far from facilitating social interactions, sometimes actively discourages them. Often this made us feel safer, while diminishing others' peace of mind. Across ethnicities, races, genders, and ages, some people would cross the street to avoid us when we were accompanied by the dogs, especially at night. Some people also avoided the parked van when the dogs were in it. Their discomfort made getting in the car, driving at night, or breaking down on the road much less worrisome for us than otherwise would have been the case. In isolated campgrounds, park rangers and fellow campers told us that just seeing evidence of big dogs, e.g., large exercise pens, crates, and Rottweiler license plate brackets on the van, often discouraged people from coming into our campsite even when we were not there.

As a result of these experiences, we became much more at ease moving around at night and in situations and locations which we would have assiduously avoided without the dogs. "Unsafe" situations, times and locations became almost "safe." Walking at night with the dogs in urban areas, in isolated campgrounds, on strange country roads eventually became experiences to look forward to. They had become socially redefined (for us) as "safe." In A New Leash on Death, novelist Susan Conant says, "Want to take back the night? Get a [big] dog..." (1990, p. 130). We expressed this sentiment as, "Thank God we had our Rottweilers with us when we had to run our Rottweilers at 2:00 a.m."

Dogs as Impediments to Social Interaction: Unsafe in Safe Places

However, being accompanied by the dogs, while increasing our sense of safety in unsafe places, times and situations, also diminished our comfort in what as real world denizens we had once considered safe places, times, and situations. Fear of the dogs caused some people to act in ways which indeed made danger more likely - for the dogs. Again, the social definition of these hobby objects may have been an issue. The stereotype of Rottweilers as large and vicious meant that normal canine behavior they exhibited, e.g., sniffing pants legs or woofing at strangers, might be considered aggressive. In other words, sometimes the visible presence of our hobby objects, the dogs, made some people feel unsafe, in the process creating problems of control and definition of the situation for us. And dogs perceived as a breed "dangerous to the public" are at risk of being shot, poisoned, hung, or stomped to death by individual vigilantes or executed by the state for exhibiting ordinary canine behavior. For example, in a recently reported instance, Animal Control at Stewart Air Force Base put down two Rottweilers who had escaped from a fenced yard. Although the dogs' neighbors, veterinarian, and the base police wrote letters that the dogs were friendly, Animal Control declared them "dangerous" and killed them because they had been hard to capture (Gardner, 1995).

We could not always prevent the possibility of negative public encounters. So we faced a definitional problem of how to recontrive them as non-threatening, even friendly and pleasant - safe for the people our dogs might frighten. This was especially difficult because one of the dogs was an exuberant youngster who adored people and other dogs. A 50 lb. Rottweiler puppy lunging and slobbering at the end of her leash to reach you, however, is not necessarily a soothing sight for "non-Rott" people. Hauling back on the leash and shouting the classic obedience commands of "Leave it" or "Out" do not necessarily reduce targets' anxiety either. After some experimentation, we finally hit upon the perfect control command: "No kissing!" Termed an "excusing tactic" by Sanders (1990) - a technique by which behavior is recast as positive rather than negative - it worked like a charm; it redefined the puppy's behavior as positive and the situation as safe. It often brought a smile to previously frightened faces.

"Excusing tactics" and the need for them are periodically discussed on a Rottweiler Internet group. One participant, "JC," reports that putting a backpack on a bitch before public appearances "made a noticeable difference in the way [she]...was looked at" (Rottie-L, 8/7/95).

A common way in which we posed threats to others as hobbyists on public ground was that the presence of the dogs sometimes inadvertently activated our privileged white racial status. Anderson reports, "As a general rule, when blacks encounter whites with dogs in tow, they tense up and give them a wide berth, watching them closely" (1990, p. 222). Across genders, ages, and classes, some black people were very wary of our dogs, particularly in the South (Brown, 1985). Clearly canine counter-terrorism, vengefully amusing on a nighttime beach in New Jersey, could make us the equivalents of those silent hulking sexual terrorists ourselves - white people with "attack dogs." For instance, in motels with large middle-class black clienteles, on our way to or from our rooms with the dogs we often encountered black guests. Some would quickly back up into their rooms again, or ask if the dogs were attack dogs, or say, "Now don't let that dog bite me." While some whites also showed fear, our dogs were more likely to distress black guests in this situation. Another example of a hobby activity making race salient occurred while driving through North Carolina:

We stopped to walk the dogs in a country hamlet. An empty lot by the railroad tracks behind a Dairy Queen seemed ideal. But as we walked the dogs we realized that the path through the lot was a short-cut heavily travelled by black people. While we were there, some women and men made a big loop to avoid us; some monitored us out of the corners of their eyes, but stayed on the path; and a couple of men stood off at the edge of the field and just watched us the whole time. Others joined them until a small clump of men had gathered to observe. Knowing how it felt to be silently stalked and trying to change the definition of the situation to at least a neutral one, we greeted every person who approached with a big friendly smile - which, given the South's race/gender history, was not necessarily helpful, but we had no idea of what else to do. To rush away might have echoed yet another bitter race/gender reality, that for black people/men to congregate in public space causes white/female flight. During the entire series of encounters (with about 10 people, men and women, over approximately a 10 minute period), nothing was said by anyone but us. We left as soon as we could. (DLG, field notes, 3/18/94)

Besides being concerned that some people would define a situation involving Rottweilers as unsafe for themselves, we also had to worry that fearful people would innocently or ignorantly provoke the dogs into appearing vicious. What was at stake for us in such instances was more than simply public etiquette. At least according to Rottweiler folklore, dogs are sometimes shot out of such groundless fears. For example, even though our dogs are extremely dog friendly, people with smaller dogs sometimes interpreted the Rotts' very presence as dangerous to their dogs. Typically, the owners of smaller dogs might become frightened when their off-leash dog decided to approach our leashed dogs. All dogs respond in some way to the approach of a strange dog. Ours stiffen their stance, which may be interpreted as "intense readiness to attack" by unknowledgeable dog owners, but which actually precedes a Rottie play bow, an invitation to play. Owners, saying things like, "Watch out, that big dog will eat you for lunch," might whisk their little fellow up into their arms, where, of course, he would proceed to bark and threaten from above, just begging to be jumped up on. Any response at all from our dogs might be interpreted as vicious, and any controlling actions of our own dogs on our part might intensify the misinterpretation. ("No kissing" doesn't work well in this situation.) Stereotyped blaming of Rottweilers for other dogs' misbehavior is discussed periodically on a Rottweiler Internet group. "KW," for instance, reports the following:

When...X was a little puppy still in the 25-35 lb. range, I'd take him to the vet and some people would still move far away from us, clutching their foo-foo dog (or sometimes even a larger one) and looking at...X like he was the anti-Christ in fur. Which made them look really silly, IMO, as...X was just sitting or lying at my side (then, and now, the lazy boy), usually yawning (Rottie-L, 8/9/95).

"LC" reports a neighbor's berating him because his Rottweiler blocked the neighbor's dog from attacking LC's child (Rottie-L, 8/1/95).

Children who were afraid of dogs would often behave as if deliberately asking to be chased. They would shriek, flap their arms and run away. Years ago, an author's fluffy, small Bedlington Terrier never caused alarm when running down children who persisted in thus imitating prey. But were a Rottweiler to chase a screaming, flapping child through a playground, the situation might be defined differently, even if in fact the child was more at risk from the Bedlington than from the Rottie. In sum, as visible hobbyists we had to become constantly alert in safe places, avoiding people whose stereotypes about our particular hobby might threaten the dogs. Thus as we walked our dogs through seemingly safe public places, our conversational subtext would be of the form, "Child alert, two o'clock," or "Small-dog alert, six o'clock."

Besides comprising particular spaces at particular times, safe places can also be public sites in which one is treated as if one has a right to privacy. Goffman (1963) refers to this transformation as "civil inattention." Participants tacitly agree to pretend that a geographically, aurally, or visually private space has been created from a public one. An example is the replacement of public telephone booths by small symbolic partitions between phones. When Americans in public obviously are engaged in a private encounter, one is usually expected to honor the participants by civil inattention. Dog obedience devotees do much of their training in public, both because large spaces are needed and also because the dogs must be "proofed" against distractions. This activity is expected to and usually does merit civil inattention. But as we trained on our travels, sometimes strange men or boys (women and girls never did this) would whistle or call to attract the dogs' attention, especially while the dogs were on long sit-stays or down-stays. Sometimes the men would even be driving by when they did this, as if to lure the dogs into traffic. So we could not count on civil inattention to protect the dogs in titularly safe places.

As a result of such encounters, the presence of the dogs made us increasingly anxious around "safe" beings - families, the elderly, children, small dogs; in "safe" places - nice motels, public recreation areas, well-populated campgrounds, grocery store parking lots; and at "safe" times - in the daylight, on weekends, after school, on holidays. Eventually, instead of affording relaxation, safe places became locales to avoid. Thus our experience of travel with dogs problematized our ordinary conceptualizations of safe and unsafe places, situations and times; of public and private space; and of our own public involvements in everyday civic life. Our visible hobbyist status was reshaping our public identities, public behavior, and emotional states.

Dogs as Facilitators of Social Interaction

While being publicly visible with hobby objects socially defined as dangerous discouraged some kinds of social encounters, it facilitated others. As predicted by the literature on pets, our overall rate of interaction with strangers increased, and the variety of strangers with whom we interacted was greater.

Some of our encounters were generic dog encounters, unrelated to our particular dogs. Strangers across ages, classes, genders, and ethnicities who just liked dogs often stopped to greet our procession. They brought their children over because the children liked dogs, or because they wanted the children to like dogs. Sometimes they brought their own dogs to meet and play with ours. Often, asking the dogs' breed, they would express surprise because these Rotts, contrary to stereotype, were not mean. The presence of the puppy precipitated some generic meetings. She might get excited and greet some strangers; they would say "what a cute puppy"; the children would ask if they could play with the dogs; we would introduce the dogs and have them show the children a few tricks; and a positive social encounter would have occurred. During this encounter we might discuss child development; puppy development; the human-animal bond; the quality of the public space in which we had the encounter; everyone's origins by state or nationality; and past, present and future lives with potential or real dogs.

Other encounters were breed-affected. For while some people feared the socially constructed Rottweiler, others actively sought ours out, in the process creating communal interactions across normally unyielding boundaries of race, class, age and gender. Here are some examples from our field notes:

We're in a cheap motel in a seedy part of rural Oregon with Ogre, a three month old puppy we acquired that morning and are transporting home. It is early evening and we are walking her across the parking lot. A huge old low-slung beat-up American boat of a car cruises up behind us and a very scary looking young white guy yells at us. We can't understand what he's yelling. He creeps closer, his car idling loudly, his arm with a large and intricate tatoo at rest on the open window. He's wearing a sleeveless black denim vest; his hair is long and unkempt; he reeks of danger. This guy is either hard-living working class or just plain lumpen. "I said, is that a bitch?" "Yes." And he begins telling us about his dogs and how much he likes Rottweilers, and are we going to breed her, and how cute she is, and can his little brother (who is six years old and also in the motel) meet her? We wound up meeting the whole family. (AL, field notes, 8/3/92)

The encounter added greatly to our feeling of safety in the motel, and gave us a small sense of community: an accurate precursor, it would turn out, to our lives with Rottweilers. This kind of makeshift public network or instant "folk" would henceforth always be a possibility. Another example from the field notes:

We're in a cheap motel (again...), this time in what we've been told is a druggy part of a honky- tonk North Carolina town. It's around 8:00 p.m., dark, cold, and starting to rain. We're unpacking the van. A black woman and her two pre-teen daughters with an old beat-up American car pull in. Their room is next to ours. As we unload the dogs, she asks if they are Rottweilers. "Yes." "Are they mean?" "Well, they're very protective, but they're not mean unless people make them mean." "Would they bite me?" "Only if you tried to do something to us." "That's better than having a man around. At least you can count on them." We all laugh. We ask if her daughters would like to meet the dogs. Yes, she would like that - then if anything happens to them in the night, maybe the dogs will protect them too. We tell her all she needs to do is yell, and we'll be out with the dogs. The little girls come over, meet the dogs, give them snacks, get kissed and licked, and we all go back to our rooms. (DLG, field notes, 1/12/94)

This instant community example reasserts the importance of a sub-theme in many of our social encounters - a theme of women as potential victims of sexual violence, not accompanied or defended by men, who are willing with the help of the dogs to band together across ordinarily impermeable boundaries of class, age, and ethnicity to protect each other. Again from the field notes:

I'm sure all of us slept easier that night, knowing that someone with whom we had a connection, however nebulous, was close by. Without the dogs, we probably would never have formed that connection. (DLG, field notes, 1/12/94)

Another instant community story from the field notes, this time crossing lines of age, gender and ethnicity:

I am using the library at the University of Houston. Every couple of hours I go out to walk and water the dogs. As we cross a busy street in the rough neighborhood that surrounds the university, a carload of young black men drives by. They all stick their heads out the window and beat on the car doors and yell something at me, but I can't understand what they're saying. I chalk it up to teenagers harassing a woman on the street and go on. They cut into a parking lot ahead of me and get out of the car, again yelling. The traffic noise is so heavy I can't understand what they're saying, but now I can see by their body movements that they're not hostile. Three casually but nicely dressed young men approach, saying, "Don't let those dogs attack me now." I ask if they want to meet the dogs. Two do. I tell the dogs, "Say hi," which is their friendly release command, and they obediently go over to the young men with their whole rumps wagging. I ask the young men to repeat what they'd yelled because I couldn't hear them before. They say they are interested in having Rottweilers someday and want to know if these are females and if I am planning on breeding them. I explain that I am not local and that they won't be bred for at least a couple of years anyway. They ask where I'm from, tell me where they're from, and we have a nice chat about going to college (they're students at the University), about dogs, and about breeding Rottweilers. (DLG, field notes, 12/6/93)

Again we see that a hobby's public visibility, as announced by the dogs, had the power to breach a normally impermeable social nexus of age, gender and race/ethnicity.

Two encounters at a Memphis motel also illustrate how the Rottweilers, by marking us as hobbyists, encouraged communication and instant community, a feeling of "folk," across social boundaries which are normally impermeable.

Incident One : It has just stopped raining. It is hot and muggy outside in the mid-afternoon, but the dogs need to go out. As I cross the parking lot heading for the empty field next door, a little pickup truck with a hard shell squeals into the parking lot beside us. A white guy, working class, jumps out of the car and rushes over to us. He was passing by, saw the Rotts, and just had to stop and say hello to two such beautiful bitches. He notices the out of state license plates on the van, wants to know what we're doing so far from home at this time of year, and we have a long talk about the dog world, dog shows (there is one in town this coming weekend), Rottweilers and a little about his life here. He's an Arthur Murray dance instructor and a local breeder of Rottweilers. We talk until the dogs are too restive to stand the heat, exchange cards, say fond farewells, and part. I am coming to accept these unlikely encounters as instant community on the road. I feel a renewed bond with the dog world and with Rott people everywhere. What a nice guy, and I never would have met him if I hadn't been with the dogs. White middle-aged female university professors and young white working-class male Arthur Murray Dance Studio instructors rarely have face-to-face personal conversations about things that really concern them - like dogs, and dog shows, and Rottweilers, and how hard the weather is on the dogs right now.

Incident Two : Same place, next day. It's late Saturday afternoon. We have just returned from the dog show and again I am crossing the parking lot of the motel to take the dogs to the field. A pickup truck with two young black men (working class) skids to a stop on the street and the driver yells something to me that I can't hear because of the traffic noise. By now I'm used to it. This is going to be a nice encounter. Sure enough, they love the dogs - beautiful bitches - and want to know if I'm breeding them any time soon. Could they get a puppy? They really want a Rottweiler that looks just like my big bitch. We have a long conversation about how to get in touch with local breeders and problems to watch out for, then part amicably. (DLG, field notes, 4/9/94)

A Virginia example:

It's early evening and we're pottying the dogs in a dark field by our motel. A black man hails us. We go to him. "What's the breeding on your bitches?" he inquires. Obviously he knows - in the dark! - that they're show dogs. We ask how. Turns out he had been X's "handler" (i.e., he had exhibited X, a famous Rottweiler champion, at shows). He goes to his car and brings out a scrapbook of show photos. We chat studs and breed lines for about 15 minutes until his girlfriend, furious, yells at him to come inside. (AL, field notes, 3/18/94)

A final example of instant community, of "Rott folk:"

We have just finished a Rottweiler Club "fun match" at a Salt Lake City park. Some club people are supervising a Rottie romp while others are cleaning up. Into the park come two white dudes with a Rott puppy. They're shirtless, beer bellies hanging out, tattoos glistening in the sun. The puppy, "Harley," is on a clothesline lead. Very tough. Astonished to see all the Rotts, they sit on the curb to finish their beers and watch. One by one the (straight, white) Rott Club people sneak away from their chores to meet Harley. The guys clearly are dismayed by all this calm, positive acknowledgement from the conventional world. But they have no way to challenge it. "Get 'em, Killer" would only intensify the coos. The ultimate blows come when the teenage daughter of a Club member frolics over all blond and permacurled to sum up Harley in the phrase, "Oh, for cute!" Then one of the toddlers chooses Harley as her playmate and off they romp to join the Rottweiler pack. "Those big dogs will eat him for lunch!" one of the dudes protests. But you can't hear him because voices from toddler type to teenage giggler are bellowing at any adult dog getting too rambunctious with Harley, "Knock it off, Bear. Cut it out, Heidi. You be nice." The guys are so shaken that they wind up asking where they can buy one of those pint-sized cloth frisbees for Harley and what kind of leash they should use. Meanwhile, several straight-looking white strangers walking their dogs see the Rott pack, do an instant about-turn and leave. (AL, field notes, 9/25/94)

Thus, publicly visible signs of alternate world membership can draw some people together across ordinary social lines in "real world" space, while separating others.

In sum, we came to expect pleasant encounters in situations where we would not have done so before, and we came to expect that our public presence in the company of dogs sometimes fosters instant communities and feeling of "folk" between people with whom ordinary norms would discourage interactions. Young men; older hotel service workers at a bus stop; white, black and Hispanic folk - we never knew but that someone would want to meet the dogs, talk to the dogs and talk about dogs, about Rottweilers in particular.

Conclusion

Our being publicly visible hobbyists simultaneously organized and problematized our own public involvement, our sense of community, our definition of "safe" and "unsafe" public places, social interactions, and times of day. Those with whom we interacted in our dog enthusiast roles similarly experienced shifting definitions of community, of safe and unsafe times, interactions and places. Many of our ordinary expectations about everyday encounters were changed, reformed, and reorganized because of our ostensibly subsidiary identity as dog enthusiasts. As this new persona permeated our public identities, our old non-dog selves became easier to discard. In the public world of strangers, leisure was coming to resemble a master status.

How much of this is unique to Rottweiler owners, to white female dog enthusiasts, or to dog hobbyists at all? The following comment by interviewee "KE" suggests that even the physical presence of a dog is not necessarily required to evoke bonds. KE is explaining responses to a German Shepherd Dog pin she wears:

Q: Do people comment on it?
A: Positively. Especially the patients. It made my job 100% easier. I was dealing with mental patients. When you're going at them with a needle they tend to get very hostile. But I always, always had a pin on my lab coat, and that was the first thing that they would notice. Probably 70% of them are dog lovers and a large percentage love the Shepherds. They would start talking about the dogs, their dogs; they didn't even notice that I was giving them their shots.

Similarly, "A," an interviewee discussing dog emblems he wears, reports, "You'd be surprised how many people respond, especially in a restaurant, by coming over and talking to us for a half hour." And interviewee "JB" says that a sign on the side of her van suffices to provoke public interactions:

Q: If you don't make money on it (the dogs), why do you do it?
A: It's interesting. I love the people that you meet. I've met people years ago that even now they remember me. At school last week there was a man doing carpentry work, and he saw me by the van and our van has a search and rescue sign on it and he came and asked me if I'd been on a search in such and such a town and I said that I had. So we talked for a few minutes. Things like that - people you meet seem to remember you. It's just interesting people.

Nor is even being physically present necessarily a condition for makeshift hobby communities. A Great Pyrenees breeder describes that breed's electronic discussion group as "'cross between a town meeting and a telephone party line'" (Catherine de la Cruz as quoted by Knapp, 1996, p. 90).

We know from the literature and our own interviews that albeit via different routes, passionate avocations offer devotees an almost-master status which many participants say they would adopt full-time if they could (Stebbens, 1979, 1992a, 1992b; Snyder, 1986). We do not know whether these status shifts affect devotees' public identities, much less in the ways we have described here. We can only report that, given how overwhelming are devotees' enthusiasms for leisure pursuits and the response of some strangers to that pursuit, we suspect some change in public experience is a normal facet of becoming a hobby "nut." But what we are describing is a mutable characteristic of involvement, not an invariant quality of personality. When dedication to a hobby wanes or becomes less visible, probably so does its effect on public identity. Devotees of many hobbies exhibit public signs of their avocation, e.g., t-shirts and bumper stickers, partly to avoid this fate.

The taken-for-granted boundaries between social spheres in daily life are ordinarily borderlines we treat as if they were impermeable and unchanging (Bourdieu, 1977). Work and leisure; public and private; and, most relevant for this paper, safe and unsafe places, times, and people are often seen as immutable antipodes. In fact, of course, they blur, harden, and shift in the give and take of everyday life. There has been a great deal of recent commentary on the loss of civic environment and the need for community, on safety in public places and on a loss of public discourse (Bellah et al., 1985). In this paper we used the world of dog sport enthusiasts to problematize polar conceptualizations of these important elements in social life.

Notes

1. Address correspondence to Ann Leffler, Liberal Arts and Sciences Program, Utah State University, Logan, UT 84322-0700, . We thank the world of dog hobbyists for its welcome and for the many hours spent educating us. We also thank the University of Utah and Utah State University for the sabbaticals which made this paper possible. Finally, we thank the BEW (Best Editor in the World), Clint Sanders, for his encouragement and suggestions.

2. Neither the literature nor we offer a clear definitional distinction between casual and passionate hobbyists. But in our interviews with the latter, they themselves differentiate the two types so as to describe their own absorption. We rely on those self-definitions here. Belk seems to suggest a similar distinction in consumer behavior with the notion of "emotionally involving consumption" (1991, p. 234).

3. As in some other hobbyist worlds, in dogs, too, one distinction between passionate devotees and casual participants is the former's use of a specialized vocabulary. This vocabulary includes self-labels. The "fancy" is a term by which dogdom distinguishes itself.

4. Throughout this paper, we report our own and our judgements of others' races, ethnicities, genders, classes, and ages. These judgements are based on perceptual stereotypes, and make some assumptions which we ourselves as sociologists know are false, e.g., that "race" is perceptually clear and that each person has only one race/ethnic identity. But they provide (often incorrect) information on what are usually public master statuses, ordinarily organizing pubic encounters among strangers. As "Americans," we brought them with us into our public lives. A major point of the paper is that being dog enthusiasts afforded us a new public master status which, by occasionally overriding these other statuses, problematizes their intrinsic informational merits to organize life in public.

5. When travelling with dogs, the choice of motels which will accept them is limited. Often motels are willing to accept only "small" pets, or only one pet. Serious dog hobbyists learn which motel chains generally accept pets. "Mom and pop" motels must be canvassed individually. This problem is sufficiently serious that at least two publications have been compiled listing motels with accommodations for pets in the United States, and that dog show brochures always list nearby motels which accept dogs.

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