The long nineteenth century and World War I greatly changed people's lives across Europe. The birth and subsequent rise of the middle class in industrialized nations significantly altered societies and cultures. In countries such as the British Empire, this new middle class challenged long-standing notions about things such as empire, human rights, and, most importantly, animal rights. The push for animal rights in Britain largely came from those in the middle class. In the second half of the nineteenth century, it represented the start of people throughout the country changing how they perceived their relationships with dogs. While the ability to own a dog as a pet was reserved for the few with the financial ability to afford to do so, the rise of the middle class in Britain introduced a whole new group of people interested in developing new relationships with dogs. However, while the middle class in Britain changed how they understood their relationship with dogs, the vast majority of the country did not. A combination of fear- primarily due to stray dogs carrying diseases like rabies- and prevailing understandings of their relationship with dogs as tools prevented many working-class individuals from following the developments made within the middle class. The outbreak of World War I in 1914 presented those within the working class a new opportunity to interact with dogs. During the tumultuous years of the war, countless British soldiers sought the comfort of companionship a dog offers, challenging their previously held notions of the animal. This thesis is as much about the people whose interactions with dogs changed their perceptions as it is about the dogs who forged those relationships. For the middle class, who had the financial means to own a dog as a pet, or for the working class, who gained that opportunity through the war, the large reason behind the changing perceptions of dogs in Britain was not other humans advocating for their better treatment; it was dogs who forged close bonds with humans.