Why is a dog not a noble animal?

Answer

Interesting question and comparison. The only thing you don’t mention from your research is that the horse, more specifically the riding horse, the warhorse etc… was mainly owned and ridden by people of nobility who often literally looked at the common people ‘from on high’. looked down. Not all horses were called ‘noble’ (the draft horse, for example, which was much cheaper), and that was not the case right from the start.

Also linguistically, ‘noble’ is derived from ‘nobility’ and you will find it with positive connotations in many terms (nobleman, noblewoman, precious metal, precious stone…). Like the riding or jumping horse once all too expensive for ‘lower’ social classes.

‘Horse’ is also used as a negative term in certain expressions, especially applied to humans (eg ‘a horse’s mouth’). In the Flanders where I grew up you could certainly buy horse meat at the butcher until the 1970s. That was cheaper than beef back then, but some people didn’t want it then. No idea if you can still buy horse meat in today’s supermarket.

Now you can of course argue that the nobility also had expensive hunting dogs, but most likely they were considered less of a pet. I also suspect (but that needs to be checked) that dogs had a hutch outside for a long time, were not literal pets for a long time (like most other pets, by the way).

A truly wonderful book in which you can find much more about this is: Keith Thomas – The desire for nature, Amsterdam, Agon, 1990 (original title from 1983: Man and the Natural World, changing attitudes in England (1500-1800)