Dogs have a better sense of reality than humans. Dogs become ecstatic when they see their human owners in person, even if the human was only gone for a couple of hours. The longer the human is gone, the happier the dog will be when they are reunited. If you go on vacation for a week, the dog will become saddened while you are gone, then overjoyed when you return.

But—and this is key—if you call home via telephone and the dog hears your voice, it will get excited for a second until it realizes that was just the phone. When the dog knows you are not actually there in person it won’t care anymore. Dogs have no interest in listening to your disembodied electronic voice or seeing your face on an iPad—because that is not you. Dogs’ primary sense of perception is smell. If they can’t smell you, you’re not real.

Dogs may be more grounded to reality because they lack humans’ capacity for imagination. It is our ability to imagine things that do not exist that allows us to bring those things into existence—to create language, art, and technology, to expand our knowledge and understanding. But there is a risk of becoming too enmeshed in the imaginative. We need to find a balance between mental reality and physical reality.

Modern humans are becoming too infatuated with the digital. We are increasingly replacing in-person communication with text messages, email, and Zoom calls. Visiting someone in virtual reality is just as good as visiting them in reality, right? Your dog would disagree. If you cannot see the other person, hear them, touch them, and smell them, then it is not real. Dogs inherently know this; humans do not. Dogs never fall for simulations, yet people are walking with open arms into the metaverse.