Noisy technology, unhappy dogs: where technology might support caregiving in the home

While the advance of technology in our homes makes human lives easier, it also presents an ever growing source of sounds that may be confusing for the dogs that share our homes with us. To understand to what extent this may be a challenge, we present the findings of an empirical study (N=104) into the perception of dogs’ reactions to sound-producing technology in the home, and to what extent caregivers seem to have accurate understandings of dog body language. We found that dogs commonly react to any device in the home that produces sound, with some types of sounds seeming to lead to positive reactions, while others seem to trigger negative reactions consistent with anxiety and other fearful behavior. Our findings further indicated that caregivers seem to struggle with identifying dog body language indicative of such anxiety and fearful behavior, leading to the need for support in doing so. We present and discuss the initial design of technological support to identify when dogs are responding to sounds in the home in negative ways, and how this might be used to both inform caregiving towards dogs, as well as optimize home environments for multispecies co-existence.