I am not really one to think about it. Unlike some I can separate between reality and games. I will do things in games that I would never do in reality. Simply because it is a game, a virtual world, that dog or person or cat or whatever isn’t real, it is just model, texture, sound files and bunch of scripts telling it how to react. It doesn’t feel pain, it is just executing script for whatever it is told to do if I shoot or punch it. Hence why I got no problem with “animal cruelty” in games. Same as I have no problem playing evil person. I have no problems doing war crimes in games like Rise of Nations. I have no problem being basically devil who murders village worth of people to buy and rent their homes out and pay my way in church to sainthood in Fable. I have no problem having organ harvesting operation from involuntary subjects I kill and then sell organs in Rimworld. And so on and on, all the stuff I would never do or want or support in real life. For same reason I have no issues killing dog in game for example. I wouldn’t kill or hurt dog in real life. But in game, it isn’t really a dog, it doesn’t have feelings and so on. I guess for same reason I had no issue with that torture part of GTA V, where you choose how Travis tortures someone. Some people just couldn’t do it, had to pass that section for a friend. But I had no issues. Since in the end of the day, it hurt no one, it was just script doing animations and playing sound files with screams. And story wise it is all fantasy that can be whatever. Preferably interesting whatever, but has no influence on real world. And again, in real life I would never torture anyone like that.
As for this approach, cat photos are nice sort of collectible thing. Dog wise, in some situations it does make sense, but not always. So it kind of feels bit funny how quickly dogs run away in the game. Dogs that are supposed to be trained to not back off easily. Still it isn’t something I would critique game for, approach definitely is novel, still I don’t really feel like it adds anything to the game. But at the same time it also doesn’t really detract anything either.