Humor me. Give it a try. You've already adnmitted that "some dogs" have most of the characteristics of wolves. So where exactly do you draw the line? What defines the difference other than selective breeding?
As for crystals, DNA and RNA have stable, crystaline forms, and yet they define living organisms. A human sperm cell is not much more than a packet of DMA.
I didn’t draw the line on species classifications, others did that. You seem to be saying that if a subspecies has similar characteristics to a species, then there is no real distinction. No problem. All mammals are exactly the same. Elephant = wolf = shrew. The differences are just a couple of distinctions claimed between the three things, so they’re really just the same.
Likewise, a quartz crystal is alive. It converts sunlight into heat, thus changing energy from one form to another. Under the right circumstances, it reproduces itself. It can be the size of a grain of sand, or several pound’s weight. It can have different colors and structures, the same way that a species can have subspecies that are differently sized and marked. Thus, a quartz crystal must be alive. Unless, of course, it isn’t.