On the role of technology in human-dog relationships: a future filled with dreams or nightmares?
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Digital technologies that help us take care of our dogs are becoming more widespread. Yet, little research explores what the role of technology in the human-dog relationship should be. We conducted a mixed-method study incorporating quantitative and qualitative thematic analysis of 155 UK dog owners reflecting on their daily routines and technology's role in it, disentangling the what-where-why of interspecies routines and activities, technological desires, and rationales for technological support across common human-dog activities. We found that increasingly entangled daily routines lead to close multi-species households where dog owners conceptualize technology as having a role to support them in giving care to their dogs. When confronted with the role of technology across various activities, only chores like cleaning up after our dogs lead to largely positive considerations, while activities that benefit us like walking together lead to largely negative considerations. For other activities, whether playing, training, or feeding, attitudes remain diverse. In general, across all activities both a nightmare scenario of technology taking the human's role and in doing so disentangling the human-dog bond, as well as a dream scenario of technology augmenting our abilities arise. We argue that the current trajectory of digital technology for pets towards allowing dog owners to interact with their dogs while away (feeding, playing, and so on) is an example of this nightmare scenario becoming reality, and that it is important to redirect this trajectory to one of technology predominantly supporting us in becoming better and more informed caregivers.
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