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Charisma isn't so much "likeability" as "the ability to leverage one's force of personality to elicit desired responses in others."
Dogs are not usually successful when their desired response is "give me treats" or "take me for a walk."
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Well, it's kind of subjective how pleasant dogs actually are. Some people consider them awkward because they drool, lick, smell, bark and follow around even if the person wants their peace.
But Cha is more than about being agreeable anyway:
Charisma measures a character’s personality, personal magnetism, ability to lead, and appearance.
At least in my book an average dog has a flatter personality, less personal magnetism and much less capability to lead humans than an average human. Appearance is subjective, won't judge that one.
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Dogs are not usually successful when their desired response is "give me treats" or "take me for a walk."
what you talking about? Or maybe my dog is just a higher level than most, or I take a racial penalty to resist doggo charm effects?
To be clear, those are just the stats for the "average" 15 point buy dog. It may not even be taking a racial penalty to charisma, but simply using it as a dump stat. So an 18 charisma dog may be possible, for the un-average dog.
The Charisma scores of creatures are assigned in a arbitrary way, because Charisma doesn't just have one meaning. In addition to being your force of personality, it can reflect how attractive you are, how charming you are, how terrifying you are (see: Undead creatures in general), and, most importantly, how well you communicate and work well with others.
The ability to work with a group should not be underestimated, and is one of the reasons we (humanity) have gotten as far as we have, Now this all does lead to some odd situations, as has been noted in the past, like how Dwarves, a race that is noted for it's ability to work together in an organized fashion, have an average Charisma of about 8, while a Tyrannosaurus has a Charisma of 10...
Well maybe that does make sense, depending on who you ask T-Rexes are scary and/or cool, and Dwarves are just grubby dirt farmers, lol.
Dwarves are lawful and wise. It means they are often good at dealing with the shortcomings of others when working as a group.
Reminder that Baba Yaga and Cthulhu have incredibly high charisma.
Even lap dogs (which use the statistics of foxes) have a Cha of 6.
Six? that's about five points too high for a dog.
Yeah, dogs should really have a charisma of at least 20.
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Is anyone else starting to visualize a tournament between various awakened and/or anthropomorphic animal sorcerers? Or bards?
Well, they aren't sorcerers or bards, but ever heard of Wacky Races? Or Laff-O-Lympics? Lots of anthropomorphic animals there.
Yet somehow, cats get a Cha of 7, despite being almost entirely unable to exert any force of will on anything. They don't have the facial muscles or variety of voice to emotionally affect humans like dogs d and they're antisocial loners to whom leadership is an alien concept.
A cat doesn't respond to any stimulus bar food or sex, like an ooze. AoN lists them under Equipment. Like a backpack or a bottle of oil. That's a Charisma of -.
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Cats are capable of manipulating people (c.f. "local cat has never been fed in entire life, says local cat") it's just that they full stop hardly care what anybody else thinks. Like the only reason adult cats meow is "to manipulate humans."
Dogs are more social creatures so "approval/disapproval from peers" matters to them.
People like dogs because they are loyal and obedient. They are easily trained and eager to please their masters. Even a kid can train one without too much effort. So in short they make great followers.
CHA is all about leadership, which is not a dog’s strong point. A creature with a high CHA score is going to end up dominating creatures around it. Sure dogs can get pushy when they want attention, but are quick to submit. When your dog’s rolls over and shows its belly that is the dog showing submission to you.
I like dogs as much as anyone, but they are bottom tier negotiators who give you their entire life and key to their happiness for 2 meals and head pats, and have a tail that betrays their bluff checks. They also have difficulty with use magic device for anything activated by a means other than removing all the fluff.
If you're going to complain about the mental stats of animals, ravens with an intelligence of 2 seems a much more egregious short changing of our animal friends.
At least Paizo appreciates the fact that most undead are very sexy.
Easy... Halflings taste better... you can only trick the public that the meat they are eating...