Talk to the animals

I was going through some old e-mail, trying to figure out an easy way to migrate all my old mail from my old Yahoo account to my new one (if you know one, please let me know), and I ran across the following story about my old housemate Salma, who was a Muslim feminist social worker but was surprisingly fun anyway. However, I still don't understand what was going on with her here:

There used to be this commercial for the local racetrack where there was a guy who wished he was "like the guy in the story" (I imagine he meant Dr. Doolittle) so he could talk to the animals. He said he'd tell the horse to "give them the race they'll never forget."

This commercial came on when we were watching TV one night. I asked Salma if she got the same impression that I did from the commercial: Didn't this guy seem a little crooked? Like, if he could talk to the horse, he'd convince it to throw the race of the century and they'd split the payoff?

Looking outraged, she immediately responded, "No way! If there's one thing that's completely disgusting, it's people and animals together. It's perverted and totally unnatural!"

What in the hell in the world? Where did that come from?

I stared at her, dumbfounded. Suddenly, she realized that she'd committed an enormous bestiality-related non-sequitur and possible Freudian slip, and she was mortified.