Language can be used as a weapon to show human dominance over other species simply by context and meaning. Sometimes, words have origin in actual occurrences, such as surrounding the horse industry, farming industry, racing industry or the history of animals, such as their use as working animals, transportation or religious connotation. Some animals are mistreated more than others verbally. Traditionally horses are given more complimentary words than say a cat. However, there are insulting terms for many animals that are there to assert human dominance or show dominance over other animals.
Terms like “Let the cat out of the bag” imply that a cat is actually being kept in a bag. This may have some origin in people putting cats in bags and drowning them if there are too many kittens. This also happened to puppies. However, keeping animals in bags is normally frowned upon (except in some necessary cases, such as for restraint or transportation by trained individuals depending on the animal and circumstance). Even such terms as “making an ass of yourself” implies that asses are in some way inferior or possess difficult social skills.
Asses and mules are good, quality social creatures, like many herd animals. They have intricate bonds and develop a pecking order with quality interaction between herd members. They are sometimes considered stubborn, and this is where the term comes from when they say someone is stubborn as a mule. This is a speciest term which implies that all mules are stubborn. This may not actually be the case as each animal is an individual.
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