Dogs seem to fall on a scale between tools and comforters.

The dog that saves mountaineers from death is merely a sophisticated tool. Likewise a dog that provides hair is a tool (or a resource).

The dog owner who is neurotically attached to her animal is using it as a comforter. It would be cruel to kill it just as it would be cruel to steal a child's teddy bear.

(Hopefully nobody is suggesting that stuffed toys have rights.)

However if she'd understood that humanity doesn't depend on having emotions but upon having thoughts and ideas and choices then she might not have become attached in the first place. She might have been saved a great deal of inconvenience and vetinary bills.

At present, when people are exhorted to treat other people 'like human beings', they are really being asked to treat people like dogs (i.e. to have regard for their emotional states, but not necessarily to try to take them seriously.)

This has got to be one of the most difficult prejudices to set right.