For folks who live alone such as I, having pets is a blessing.
He was talking about married couples substituting dogs or cats for children, not about having pets in general.
Still...I remember when one old lady in the parish confessed that she had been angry with her cat, and the priest told her that what she really needed to do was find some human companionship. Her penance was to go to some social activity at the church! (I wasn’t listening outside the confessional, she talked about it later.)
Of course, this was years ago, when people still went to confession and priests still cared enough to hear them.