> We never needed CCTV in the 90s/00s for dogs.

We never needed the telephone back when we had smoke signals and carrier pigeons either.

Here are three real scenarios that have happened to us just off the top of my head where I was thankful we had cameras and locally stored footage rather than smoke signals and old timey folklore:

1. We couldn't find our cat last summer. Turns out she was sitting in the living room window and pounced on a fly that landed on the screen. The corner of the screen pushed out and she fell right out the window. She has no interest in going outside so we never looked for her out there, but she was huddled in a bush right where she fell hours later.

2. A train carrying chemicals derailed and caught fire in my hometown several years ago, causing an evacuation order while we were out of town (https://www.kcci.com/article/evacuation-order-lifted-followi...). The sheriff wouldn't let us back into town for several hours, but we were at least able to judge that our animals were nervous yet okay.

3. My wife came in from the back yard with the dog, who had suddenly started foaming at the mouth. She's panicking, thinking he ate some kind of poison. I have no idea what's going on, so while she calls the vet I look at the camera feed for our patio and see he had been following a little toad around on the deck while my wife was in the garden before finally scooping it up and giving it a few licks.

Would we have gotten by without a camera in all of these scenarios? Absolutely. But it never hurts to have more data, especially when it's privacy friendly and local, and it's disingenuous to nitpick the very basic human desire for peace of mind as if you don't understand it.

> or if having to regularly leave them alone beyond what is fair to them, re-home them

> And if you need to check they're not causing mischief they're likely not tired enough

Don't patronize me.

The use case is peace of mind lol, what's not to understand?