ABSTRACT
The chapter opens with the story of training as a “pupsitter” with Palmetto Animal Assisted Life Services, or PAALS, a nonprofit that matches dogs with people with disabilities. A companion dog’s behaviors must be tightly controlled--even more than other dogs, trainees must learn to stay intently focused on their human companion’s behavioral cues. Eye contact between species is the norm. This chapter focuses on a frequently climactic moment in canonical nature writing: the moment of the face-to-face encounter, of eye contact between species. What is actually going on between species here, and what is being simulated with “social robotics?” How does biomimetics function as an exploration of otherness here, when what’s being represented is the relationship between the human animal and another species? The narrative covers a home visit by Sony’s AIBO, a shiny plastic dog with a pretty impressive repertoire of behaviors for a robot that’s almost prehistoric at this point. Then it considers PARO, a warm and fuzzy bundle of hardware and software meant to resemble a baby harp seal. The narrator joins University of Brighton researcher Penny Dodds to bring PARO to visit with patients and caregivers at The Burrowes in Brighton, where she has studied the clinical reception of the social robot among patients with behavioral challenges associated with advanced dementia. Then, at the Bentley Adult Day Care facility in Athens, Georgia, the narrator participates in social contact with this “interactive third” in a clinical setting.
