Somewhere in the last fifteen years the dog became content. Not only a companion, but a subject: photographed daily, posted, captioned in the first person, given an account of its own.
Most of this is harmless and some of it is delightful. It is worth noticing the two places where it quietly changes behaviour, because both of them cost the animal something.
What a photograph actually contains
Proof that a dog existed in a place at a time, and a frame chosen by a human being for its appeal. That is the whole of it.
This matters most when a photograph is being used as evidence. A walker sending a picture from a park has demonstrated that the dog was in the park. Whether the dog was stiff on the hill, whether it refused food it normally takes, whether it was watchful near the building works for the first time, none of that survives into the image, and all of it is the information worth having.
The same applies to owners judging their own dog's day. The photograph from the weekend outing tells you the dog was there. It does not tell you whether the Monday to Friday is working, and the picture is frequently the thing that stops the question being asked.
The most reassuring images are the least informative ones. That is precisely why they circulate.
The pictures we like best
Look at the genre honestly. A large share of the most-shared dog photographs show animals doing things dogs do when they are uncomfortable: a face held between two small hands, a dog in a hat, a dog being hugged around the neck while its head turns away and the whites of its eyes show.
That last one is worth learning to see. Whale eye, a turned head, a closed mouth, a paw lifted: these are appeasement signals, and in a great many charming photographs they are the entire content of the dog's contribution.
Nobody in those pictures intends anything unkind. The point is that the frame rewards a particular kind of image, and the animal has no way of declining to be in it.
Performing ownership
The second effect is subtler and applies to owners rather than to audiences. Once a walk is something that will be documented, the walk changes. There is a pause for the photograph. There is a preference for the scenic route over the one with the hedgerow. There is an interest in the dog looking at the camera, which means calling its name during the twenty seconds it had found something genuinely absorbing.
None of that ruins a dog's life. It does mean that a portion of the time nominally spent with the animal is spent producing an artefact about the time spent with the animal.
The test is easy to run: leave the phone in your pocket for one walk and notice how often you reach for it.
The privacy nobody thinks about
Dogs cannot be embarrassed, which removes the usual argument. What remains is practical: a public account that shows the same park at the same hour, the front of a building, a breed, a name and the fact that the household is away this week is a legible pattern, and that is a security question about a home rather than a question about a dog.
It matters more for the people in the frame than for the animal. Children, neighbours, the interior of a flat, a street sign, the number on a door: those are somebody's private details, and they are usually in the background rather than the subject.
The version that holds up
Photograph the dog, by all means. There will come a year when those images are the most valuable things on your phone, and nobody has ever regretted taking them.
What is worth keeping alongside them is the other record: the written one. What was eaten, how the dog moved, what changed. It is unphotogenic, nobody will like it, and it is the thing that a vet will ask you about.
And when you are choosing what to post, look at the dog's face first rather than at the composition. If the animal in the frame is asking to be somewhere else, the picture is not the one to keep.
General information for dog owners in Luxembourg, not veterinary or legal advice. For your own dog, ask your vet, a qualified behaviourist or your commune. How this journal is written and checked.
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