Grammatical understanding

Take a look at the sentence: 'They talk about me like a dog' (said Obama).

In my Chinese eyes, the sentence has two equal probabilities:

1) 'They talk about me like that a dog is talking about me'. That is, "they are like a dog when talking about me".

2) 'They talk about me like that I am a dog'.

I wonder why 2 is correct while 1 is wrong.