Conceding your point in the context of hunting, there are many good uses of "like a dog" in literature.
As an American Civil War Buff, I am reminded of the (apocryphal?) story of Barbara Fritchie (or Frietschie)
Barbara was a 57-year-old Uniomist in the town of Frederick MD in 1862 when Lee's Army of Northern Virginia invaded the North for time first time. Barbara flew a Union Flag from her window as Stonewall Jackson's Confederates marched through town.
View attachment 624105 John Greenleaf Whittier wrote a poem the next year "Barbara Frietchie" Excerpt:
Up the street came the rebel tread,
Stonewall Jackson riding ahead.
Under his slouched hat left and right
He glanced: the old flag met his sight.
“Halt!”— the dust-brown ranks stood fast.
“Fire!”— out blazed the rifle-blast.
It shivered the window, pane and sash;
It rent the banner with seam and gash.
Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff
Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf;
She leaned far out on the window-sill,
And shook it forth with a royal will.
“Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,
But spare your country’s flag,” she said.
A shade of sadness, a blush of shame,
Over the face of the leader came;
The nobler nature within him stirred
To life at that woman’s deed and word:
“Who touches a hair of yon gray head
Dies like a dog! March on!” he said.
All day long through Frederick street
Sounded the tread of marching feet:
All day long that free flag tost
Over the heads of the rebel host.
Three months after the incident, Barbara had died. Nine months after incident, Jackson died of wounds received at the Battle of Chancellorsville, thirteen months after the incident, Whittier published the poem and made them immortal (so that schoolboys like me would have to memorize the poem 98 years later - and get misty every time I remember it)