I hate them, too. Sure, they are small and moderately cute. Big or small, cute or ugly, mutt or purebred, I' m completely indiscriminate toward real dogs. I coo to the fat chocolate lab that lives in my building. I stroke the warm, wriggling body of the local Rottweiler and anxiously watch the growth of a bichon fris puppy that has moved in up the block.
People love dogs for two basic reasons.
First, they are cuddly, whereas the robot dogs are not. Second, though people don't much like to think about it, dogs are easy to dominate. We love them because we can control them. People have bred pet dogs for floppy ears, short muzzles, frequent barking and other infantile behaviors that no adult wolf or fox ever displays. We prefer pets that resemble puppies long into their adulthood partly because their perpetual juvenility allows us to express huge degrees of affection and sentiment toward them.