Could a Drone Walk My Dog? Part 2

Yesterday I shared my musings on whether a drone could feasibly walk my dog for me. I thought it was only fair to run the thought experiment from the perspective of my dog, Walton...

Walton's POV

From the other end of the lead

I don’t know what January is.

I know the ground is colder. I know Dog Man sighs more before putting on the coat. I know the walk still happens, because the walk always happens. That’s how the world makes sense.

The walk is important. It’s where messages live. On lampposts, in hedges, along fences. Every smell is information. Every pause is deliberate.

So when the door opens and something unfamiliar is waiting, I notice immediately.

It doesn’t smell right.

No warmth. No pockets. No biscuits. It hovers and hums, like an anxious insect, and clips itself to my lead.

This is not my human.

Normally, the human understands the lead. We have an agreement. I pull a little. They respond. It’s a conversation.

This thing doesn’t converse.

I step forward. It resists. I stop. It freezes. I look left. It doesn’t notice.

I pull harder, not to be difficult, but to learn. The world teaches through resistance.

The thing wobbles.

Then the squirrel appears.

This is a rule of the walk: when a squirrel appears, everything else stops. The human knows this. There’s a tightening of the lead, a warning tone. Preparation.

The thing hesitates.

Just a moment too long.

I launch. The response is late and sharp. Not angry. Just… mechanical. As if it had to ask permission before deciding what I meant.

I don’t like that.

Walking together is about trust. The human trusts me not to sprint into the road. I trust the human to understand when I stop suddenly, or slow down, or need a moment at that one corner.

The thing has no memory of me.

It treats rain like a problem. Wind like a risk. Fog like a failure. These are not failures. These are just conditions.

When the lead goes tight, something changes. With the human, tightness means emotion. With the thing, it means a limit has been crossed.

I pull again.

It pulls back too much.

A bin lorry roars past. I jump. The thing overcorrects. A cyclist appears suddenly. It hesitates. A child runs toward me. It nearly crashes into a tree.

It isn’t cruel. It isn’t broken.

It just doesn’t know me.

Eventually, we get home. The door opens. The human returns. The lead changes hands.

I shake hard, resetting the world.

The human laughs and scratches the right place behind my ear. I forgive them instantly.

But I think about the thing. About how it watched me, measured me, reacted without understanding.

Walking together isn’t just movement.

It’s trust, built slowly, through shared mistakes.

And you can’t program that.