“Civilization across the world has been largely built on the backs of horses and dogs, and we have valued them precisely because of the superiority to other animals that their intelligence and apparent emotional capacities suggest. Otherwise, they would have been as much use to us as rats; and as much honored.”
More likely they are valued based on their usefulness. Pigs are at least as intelligent as dogs but their usefulness is limited to food. So we eat them.
I agree with you about the intelligence of pigs - though they are useful for hunting truffles :-0
But I think humans regard horses and dogs with more than just an appreciation for their usefulness. There’s a symbiotic relationship there that humans and the animals both seem to recognize on an emotional and psychic level.
(Another interesting human-animal relationship is between the falconer and his bird. That bird is never a pet nor a ‘follower’. The two are coworkers, partners.)