With dogs and or followers in tow, visiting villages and settlements can be bit tedious when [C]hat defaults to animal/follower and not chat.
So I suggest to move to dog (& follower) commands to ‘!’ From ‘C’ (as ‘c’ is close, and ^c is Cooking)
Logic here would be to command the others vs chat with your dog to Come, Doggo Come!; when you don’t even see the beast.
Also when visible, but out of conversation range, I need to turn away: not to see the dog, to be able to call it to come closer. Otherwise I get prompted “you get no response, get closer”