Want a Friend in the AI Age? Get a Dog: Adrian Wooldridge

The most moving scene in Homer is not the death of the great heroes, Patroclus or Hector, but the tail-wagging of a pet dog, Argos. After 20 years away, ten fighting the Trojans and ten wandering the seas, Odysseus returns to his hometown of Ithaca disguised as a beggar. As he approaches his family palace, where his wife is being besieged by leeching suitors, he encounters his childhood pet Argos, which he raised from a puppy into a magnificent hunting dog, swift as a stag and bold as a lion, but that has now fallen on hard times, old and ...