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What specific bonds may be observed between a woman writing in the early 20th century, a female veterinary surgeon today and millions of anonymous people who share a bond with their pets? What special understanding, secret alliances and outbursts of passion underpin this bond with a creature who will die before them and for whom they will have to learn to grieve, a loss some pet owners recover from, and others not. This article looks at literary and artistic references, experiments in animal medicine and evocations of shared experiences which bear witness to the interactions taking place within the human-animal relationship, from the vantage point of psychoanalysis. Some of these references will enable us to pinpoint examples of the less glorious side of this relationship and the strange roles humans sometimes impose upon animals in the most undignified manner.