Andrew Needs a Real Dog

If the original Stepford Wives made your blood run cold, you better hope to stay away from any nursing home that acts on the findings of researcher Andrew Ng's study of robots as human companions.

Ng's study found that humans can warm up to plastic and wire in the shape of a canine almost as readily as they do to the flesh and fur dogs that have been our steadfast and loyal companions since we first civilized ourselves by the fire.

Ng's research involved dividing into three a group of 38 seniors in a nursing home and exposing one third to Sparky, a rescued street mutt turned pet-therapist, one third to AIBO, a Sony-made robot, and one-third, the control group, to neither. The visits lasted 30 minutes.

At the end of this 8-week experiment, the residents exposed to the real pup said Sparky was their confidant. Those exposed to AIBO said it took a bit longer to warm up to it but did. Ng says that both groups showed a decrease in loneliness and an increase in attachment to their visitors.

So what?

So if it's your job to make the old folks feel good inside the nursing home, mechanical dogs are probably ultimately more cost effective than the kind that eat and pee, require the occasional bath, and sometimes get sick.

If you're a human being who has ever loved a dog, you feel pretty bad for Ng. Because you know there's no replacement for the head of your resting dog heavy and warm and trusting on your thigh, the wag of the tail that says, "I'm happy you're here, friend;" the eye contact that reminds you, that you, too, are part of that natural world that is full of mystery and has a heart that beats with love for you.

Remember The Stepford Wives? The real horror of that movie was that the husbands were as inhuman as the pretend wives they created. The men were rejecting the integrity of life itself when they discarded the thinking, feeling, dynamic nature of their wives. The real horror of this movie is that the robotic wife replacements merely reflected the unthinking selfishness and cruelty of husbands.

There's nothing like looking into the eyes of a dog and seeing a kinship that stretches back to the first fire; no dim and glassy reflection of ourselves in a synthetic canine eyeball can replace that.

I know a woman who is a pet therapist. She is wheelchair bound, and she inherited her dog from her now deceased son. The two of them visit hospitals and nursing homes in all kinds of weather all year. Recently, the dog celebrated his 300th hour of voluntary pet therapy at a city hospital. The hospital feted him as if he were a visiting dignitary. He is that hospital's greatest asset; he is the face of the caring we all seek. He is also a regular communicant in the church I attend. Nobody bats an eye when he receives Communion. Nobody doubts the integrity of his soul.

Poor Andrew Ng needs a dog.