How dogs become accurate instruments: care, attunement, and reflexivity

Abstract

Those who live with Type 1 Diabetes have lost the possibility of producing insulin; they are dependent on non-living and living prostheses—machines, human beings and animals—that constantly read, measure, translate and interpret the fluctuations of their blood sugar to avoid hypoglycemia, which can be lethal, or hyperglycemia, which can lead to long-term complications. This philosophical essay, based on interviews and observations in a training facility, follows how dogs become “biocompatible patient friendly alarm systems” for hypoglycemia. It also explores how different modes of translation operate in the creation of a symbiosis between a human and an animal and how, along with them, a new conception of responsibility, accuracy, and of the subject emerge.