I feel like anything looking at human/animal interaction in spec fic has to treat some with Anne McCaffrey, who's prototypical of the companion animal fantasy. (Which recommendation I came to via thinking about Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette's revisionist companion animal fantasy A Companion to Wolves.) Thinking about stories told more from the animal point of view -- Peter Rabbit et al. by Beatrix Potter, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH... I feel like Disney has to factor in here too.
Outside spec fic, James Herriot and Jim Kjelgard seem to me to be prototypical of two different strains of literature about human relations with animals. Rascal, by Sterling North; a lot of stuff by Farley Mowat.
Vis-a-vis human/animal hybrids, the Animorphs series by K.A. Applegate and Eva by Peter Dickinson are the things which come first to mind, though The Island of Dr. Moreau is probably where the hybrid entered modern fiction. (Except inasumch as Frankenstein's monster is portrayed as a human/animal hybrid.)
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Outside spec fic, James Herriot and Jim Kjelgard seem to me to be prototypical of two different strains of literature about human relations with animals. Rascal, by Sterling North; a lot of stuff by Farley Mowat.
Vis-a-vis human/animal hybrids, the Animorphs series by K.A. Applegate and Eva by Peter Dickinson are the things which come first to mind, though The Island of Dr. Moreau is probably where the hybrid entered modern fiction. (Except inasumch as Frankenstein's monster is portrayed as a human/animal hybrid.)