@Intrepid,
Sure, he is a fool, if for no other reason that if you dare to disagree with him he claimed you are a pothead or a Unabomber type person living alone in a shack with no human contact of any kind. Force to forms emotional relationships with only animals.
This kinds of personal attacks without any foundation in the real universe make him at least look like a fool.
He does however have a small point as my wife had just cheerfully pointed out concerning dogs and humans. In 1990 when she was, living with me as a girlfriend she informed me that she was moving back to Detroit from Miami.
I said to her fine however, Muffin her dog and I had bonded and she was straying with me and not going back to Detroit with her.
At this point she then claimed that I had always love her dog more then her but as I then pointed out to her the dog was not telling me she wish to leaved me.
In any case, decades later I did end up marrying the lady so I guess we also had a lasting bond almost as strong as the one I had form with her dog<grin>.