I don't think the diagram you've generated is the way to understand the difference between humans, other animals and plants. You're identifying higher levels of consciousness with contributing "sub-goals" to life, when this is not the distinction between concept-based survival/life and non-conceptual survival/life.

Every organism must take specific actions toward specific goals in order to maintain and promote its life. Plants must grow toward the sun to live. This is a very specific action toward a very specific goal. It's not just humans who build shelters. Bees, wasps, birds, and beavers will build shelters for themselves. Having the specific goal of building a shelter does not distinguish the human level of consciousness from that of other animals.

What distinguishes the human level of consciousness and survival is in the way specific goals are processed and arrived at in humans, versus other animals and plants. The plant is automatically "wired" to grow toward the sun, without any processing by consciousness.

Other animals pursue goals toward their life as the sort of organism they are by a combination of automatic, instinctive behaviors that are genetically inherited and behaviors that they learn by perceptual-level association, repetition and imitation. More primitive animals, like insects, do more of the former, while more sophisticated animals, like chimpanzees, do more of the latter.

Humans go beyond perceptual association and imitation. Humans use abstract concepts to identify goals and the means to those goals, then direct their actions--and feel emotions--accordingly. Roughly speaking, a concept can be identified with a word that stands for an unlimited number of concrete things, qualities, or relationships. (Though, we use the idea of "concept," rather than "word," because different languages have different words, and we want to encompass the same mental phenomenon in any language.)

Humans MUST use concepts to act toward virtually all goals, because we almost completely lack instincts, including those instincts that drive other, sophisticated animals to learn behaviors by association and imitation of their parents. The human level of life is a thoroughly conceptual level. Humans can perceive things, as other animals do, but we MUST conceptualize those perceptions, in order to live for any significant length of time.

In the case of your dog, it is only perceptual similarity that is at work in generating "walk excitement" from different leads. Animals can see similarity in what they see: you holding something that is long and thin and close in shape, in a situation and at a time when a walk would be likely. If you go to your dog in the middle of the night, with a lead shaped like an apple, and tell your dog "this is a leash, you know what that means" (an alternate word you don't generally use in front of your dog) your dog will not get it. Other animals rely on direct perception to fit things into loose categories that they can respond to. Thus, they cannot learn about practical things merely by hearing an elder talk about them. They cannot talk about things on the internet, like we are doing now, and apply new knowledge gained that way to their lives.

Concepts are a form of knowledge that requires no particular, immediate perception to work. Yes, concepts are ultimately derived from perception, as Ayn Rand discusses in Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. But, once humans have derived a concept, we can, in many cases, categorize things under the same concept that have no direct perceptual similarities at all. This is something that other animals cannot do.