I dont know where youre getting that, I got the "mabari dominance is active in this area" (paraphrasing) message the very first time he did it.
The break in at Drakon was great with Dog. I took Dog and Morrigan … and if I recall correctly Morrigan got fed up and I just let Dog take the lead on the rescue. They did a really good job on that.
I always set him up to overwhelm mages on sight … my favorite part of his combat.
On the DLC with Morrigan … I loved her reaction to seeing Dog again as well.
See how jocks oppress us? See?
Cats are very "fuck off!" if they don't like something and that's cool. They also have the best lives imaginable. On the other hand, dogs are always happy in everything they do. Happy when you get home, happy when they go for a walk, happy if you look in their direction, happy when you sneeze, happy when the wind blows in their face… it's very easy to make these guys happy.
Cats on the other hand… complicated creatures. Both are cool! But cats are cooler.
It can be different by not using an optimized mage character, you need at least one but could focus more on healing and support. Then there's various combination that are working well, a killer rogue with both high attack and high defense is the best known but two 2H warriors can be huge too and make mostly all kills. A funny trick is using two 2H and earthquake, or have both 2H constantly attack and incapacitate a dangerous opponent.Magic felt really powerful in this game, awsome AoE spells. In comparison, the melee characters felt mostly like movable roadblocks that are there to keep enemies from rushing the mages - Is it different if you play a melee character?
Myself I'd suggest try replay DAO and this time give a deeper check to companions at camp. It's what I did, during my first play I quickly end mostly skip their camp dialogs and give up trying too much get their acknowledgment. But when I replayed I dig that camp dialogs and got quite surprised by the depth and quality.The sequel is quite a bit better than what you are reading. I'm playing it right now and, other than the insane re-use of sets, it's been quite good.
So you barely did any of the companion quests? Did you .. have a little chat with Flemeth at least?