English is her first language.

See above for my response to AliceKate bringing this up.

Out of curiosity, do you use pronouns that match the gender of people when referring to them, or do you use the pronoun matching the gender of person (or some other category)? If you refer to women using feminine pronouns, is because a woman is female or because "woman" is feminine? Is it ever considered grammatically correct to refer to a woman, who is known to be a woman, using masculine pronouns? Maybe it is, I really don't know.

I can see how people with first languages as you describe would default to using the pronoun matching the gender of the noun. I have more trouble understanding why the gender of a noun would take precedence over an animal's sex, when it is known. And to be clear, the sentences don't even make use of the words "dog" or "cat" most of the time, but the animal's name.

I think this may come down to me disliking when animals are spoken of essentially as if they are all the same and that their specific features are of no consequence. That's how it feels when she repeatedly uses the wrong pronouns. But like I said, English is her first language, so there's really no excuse.