Abstract
Can the progressive change in human-animal relationship in "Western culture" be understood as a part of Norbert Elias' civilizing process? Is it possible to demonstrate the civilizing process on the phenomenon of "pets"? Can the progressive expansion of pets into all social classes in early modern period and 19th century and the change in their "function", i.e. the change in the way how they are viewed in last decades, be explained on the ground of the civilizing process? Was "culturalizing" of man always in a narrow conneciton with "denaturalizing" of (some) animals? To which paradoxes the division between nature and culture lead in past?