Since we were recently on the subject of pony mod related artwork, I'll shamelessly plug my demise of
Rainbow Dash comic. Similar format to Applejack's. Fluttershy died in my last forgotten beast attack, but her death was pretty similar to Dash's. Well, I think her skin might have melted off from the deadly dust, or something. That's different enough for another comic I guess.
Thing is, every animal fluttershy owns seems rather self-aware. How many birds do you know are willing to sing for a group of strangers and are capiable of helping clean up a house?
A good point. It's this that reminds me of the stance I used to take for Sonic the Hedgehog when I was still really into it. We can just assume that there are sapient and non-sapient versions of these animals. At least in Sonic the distinction was clear (basically walking on two legs or not), but I guess you could use similar logic here. The non-sapient equids are the ponies' equivalent of apes.
Just assume that there are non-sapient and sapient cows and you can kind of handwave the whole situation of milking and butchering them. Not a clean solution really, but maybe good enough. I can clearly imagine that if I was a pony instructed to butcher an animal pony, I would probably be at least a little hesitant, unless the distinction is readily evident (the difference between humans and chimps for example).
