This twist in the conversation has me intrigued and has gotten my research fingers banging on the Google keyboard. My guess is that every state considers pets as property. I don't know that to be a fact (yet), but I would be willing to bet a lot of money (if I were a betting man) that at least most of the U.S. states view pets as property. This obviously creates a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth in litigation situations when a pet owner is only awarded the market value for a lost pet after winning a lawsuit. I know that some jurisdictions weigh show dogs and breeding stock differently, but I would guess that the awards are rarely what an owner would expect.
As a side note, I always assumed that the term "adopted" was from general usage and not really intended to meet legal standards.
