Your statement about dogs is untrue. Dogs, and a lot of other animals, have the ability to think creatively, i.e. to come up with new stuff, new tricks. A lot of animals also have self-awareness* (e.g. dolphins, elephants, magpies). Of course, we as humans excel at the task of thinking, since it's one of our greatest advantages, but the task of thinking and being self-aware is found in other animals, so there must be a way of reproducing this.

What spawns creative thinking and self-awareness is of course a mystery, but I think it's a consequence of creating a complex enough system and creating a system that's built on ordered chaos.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-awareness#Self-awareness_i...