No, they aren't but some dogs are more important to me than people, any day of the week.
When my dog Bradley, a beagle, became ill with bladder cancer in 2004, I did research and found an animal hospital in the Midwest that had access to a Canadian drug that treated this type of cancer. I drove Bradley to that hospital (a 1,500 mile trip) once a month for 18 months for a week-long treatment that kept him alive and in great spirits.
In 2006 he was 17 and developed a paralysis of the spine which was not treatable and my wife and I made the tough decision to put him to sleep.
Doing some back-of-the-envelope figuring, we spent $26,000 to have Bradley treated. Don't regret a penny of it.
People have become better people because of animals in their lives. They have become more caring people, more appreciative of life in general, more human. Some people just don’t get it.