COSETTE AND

PARA-DOGS

I have loved animals as long as I can remember. Whether this passion is inborn or was nurtured by my childhood in Africa I cannot say. I used to live close to the forest, and I have memories of snakes, guenons and chameleons paying repeated, unauthorized visits to my home, eliciting my mother’s dismay and my curious surprise.

As a little girl I dreamed that, one day, I would own a mansion where I could host not only dogs, but couples of all wild and farm animals in a kind of earthly Noah’s Ark: from tigers to cats, from gazelles to horses –

all of whom I would equally, happily attend. 

Life took its own turns and, rather than a veterinary, I became a specialist in 19th-century English and Italian literature which I researched and taught for years in the UK and Switzerland. The philosophical thinking of my favourite Italian poet, Giacomo Leopardi, directed me towards posthumanism and zooanthropology, a new philosophical discipline founded in Italy by the veterinary, ethologist and philosopher Roberto Marchesini. It took little to decide to embark on a new career as a dog educator and a dog instructor by enrolling at SIUA, the School for the Interaction between Humans and Animals, founded in Bologna by prof. Marchesini.

This is where the story of Para-dogs begins.