Proper nouns are capitalized. It has nothing to do with respect. It is how English, our great language, is written.
dear drew,
Whyen I learned about the saracen/mohammedans in Junior high School, it WAS taught to use a lower case letter at the beginning of the term, as it was as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson had written about them!
Now, 51 years later, they themselves have proved to not be worth an upper case letter to denote those dogs.