My takeaway from this is that it's worth considering whether there are small, fixable problems that you've just been living with preventing you from accomplishing the things that you want.

Except they can and they do... It simply isn't an analogous 1:1 representation of what a human smile means. It's not anthropomorphising to say that a smiling dog is happy, but it is if you suggest that it can only mean happiness. Dogs will smile when they're calm, content, and happy, but they will also smile when they're being submissive or scared, it has to be taken into context with the rest of the body language being displayed and the circumstance.

I mean maybe... But also worth considering is that she knew the place, was close to it, and it smelled like dog. I have a husky who's too smart for his own good, and if I'm being honest probably gets spoiled a little too much. He has a good life, is what I'm saying. He also goes into full sled-dog sprinting mode trying to pull us down the sidewalk when we walk past a nearby groomer/doggy daycare spot we've boarded him in the past. He hates getting groomed, he just loves other dogs and he knows there's a ton of them there he gets to interact with. He seeks it out so often on his walks that if he ever went missing I would definitely think to check there.

Where are my testicles, Summer?

Upvoting because it's a good question, but I couldn't disagree more with the premise. In Discipline and Punish Michel Foucault lays out an argument about why the criminal justice systems of the western world shifted from public torture and execution to a prison system. It's very well worth the read and I could not do it justice, but I'll try to lay out a argument from it. There are a few points from it worth bringing up. Public torture and executions were considered a right of the sovereign whose laws were broken. The severity of the punishment was not simply about the degree to which the law had been broken, but rather a display to the public of the sovereign upholding their end of the social contract. The power that sovereigns had to wield was justified by the notion that their laws and their rule protected those under it, and public displays were a signal that they upheld their end of the social contract, provided the order that they claimed to, and reinforced the notion that they had the right to employ that force. What ultimately abolished such displays was a change in the philosophy behind them. It was a deeper understanding of the inherent flaws of that system. It too easily evokes sympathy for the punished and may tilt public opinion against the sovereign. In times when the people do not feel the sovereign is upholding their end of the social contract, it provokes them, and directs their attention towards the sovereign. The shift towards gentler discipline, more private and less extreme forms of punishment, was the result of philosophical advancement, and the shift occurred in less than a century.

It's important to note that Foucault did not think that the shift was an effort to become more humanitarian, but rather a technological progression in our philosophy of power. But the advancement of this philosophy had a radical effect on how those subjected to criminal justice systems were treated.

Is it unreasonable to think that war crimes, which are also an application of power by rulers, for the purpose of control, could also change drastically in the way they manifest as a result of greater public understanding of the effects they have?