Reconcile

If a dog can be made an officer of the law and someone can be charged with assaulting an officer for injuring a police dog...

How is it that my dog cannot be made a family member and the police likewise charged when they casually shoot them?

A dog is either a piece of property, or it's not.

The response that they were only doing as they were trained is exactly as much of an excuse as it sounds.  Right up there with, "he started it."

Here's the rub about the police, Mr Gilette reminded me...

If it is wrong for me to do something, it is also wrong for me to hire someone else to do it for me.

Can I shoot the neighbor's dog?  Under what circumstances?

To account for the hiring morality, the circumstances must be identical for the officer and me.  The same goes for carrying a gun, self-defense, ect...

If it's wrong for me to possess a machinegun made after 1986, then it's wrong for me to hire people with machineguns made after 1986.  If it's right that I pay a $200 tax to acquire such an item, then likewise so should the people I hire pay it.

If police dogs are people, so is my dog.  The hirelings cannot be morally elevated past the morals of the citizens who hired them.

So if it's OK to waste a dog for barking "because training" then all I need to do is find a trainer who will teach me that and voila!  Get out of jail free!

I can see you sitting there with a wrinkled brow, thinking, "no that's not right..."  Because you almost see it.  You just haven't connected that "I followed my training" is the echo of another invalidated excuse of a government worker "I was just following orders."

The citizens being subjected to these imbalances in morality certainly sense the wrongness, even if they can't express it.