  Digital technologies that help people take care of their dogs are becoming
more widespread. Yet, little research explores what the role of technology in
the human-dog relationship should be. We conducted a qualitative study
incorporating quantitative and 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 their dogs lead to largely positive considerations, while activities that
benefit themselves 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 human
abilities arise. We argue that the current trajectory of digital technology for
pets is increasingly focused on enabling remote interactions, an example of the
nightmare scenario in our thematic analysis. It is important to redirect this
trajectory to one of technology predominantly supporting us in becoming better
and more informed caregivers.
