"Taking Your Dog To Paris" versus "Bringing Your Dog To Paris"

After re-reading some of my earlier posts I wanted to make a distinction between "Taking Your Dog To Paris" and "Bringing Your Dog To Paris". At Cal State LA's Philosophy MA program I learned to make distinctions in words and, in the context of this blog, making this kind of dog-distinction seems useful.

It seems to me that Taking Your Dog To Paris has a similar meaning to Taking Your Wife To Paris, or Taking Your Daughter To Paris. In this sort of usage, you are saying that what is important about Paris is that your dog/wife/daughter get to visit the city, that there is something good about going to Paris that you want to share with your dog/wife/daughter (although I guess the reverse holds as well, that you could be Taking Your Neighbor To Work, for example).

Bringing Your Dog To Paris is, to me, something more similar in usage to Bringing Your Raincoat To Paris or Bringing Your Credit Card To Paris. In this usage, what you bring you are bringing because it is useful to you. So, if you've brought your dog or raincoat or credit card it's because you think you'll find them useful.

So, we're bringing our dog Cassie to Paris. We think she'll be useful to us (no, not as a guard dog!). We're looking forward to seeing if we are right!