People having empathy for animals but not to humans who are different from them.

Humans have 46 chromosomes. Dogs have 78.

Dogs are a special case. Humans are part of their soil, the soil they evolved in. They must have features (physical, behavioral) to manipulate humans into treating them like part of the group.

Think of the environment dogs evolved in. Small homogenous groups of humans. They aren’t even human, and humans still treated them as part of the in group, while at the same time killing people outside of their clan who looked and acted almost exactly like they did, certainly well within the bounds of what would today be a single nation or region within a nation.

Dogs and empathy towards them are totally compatible with human xenophobia or whatever we call it, there is no contradiction or hypocrisy here.