i think he should have a Border Collie. intelligent, enthusiastic, determined, and very good at rearing sweet little sheep ;)

I was trying to look into local breeds, but I really don't know enough about them tbh so might as well! Airplane's haphazard world building allows for much wilder things than foreign dog breeds in ancient fantasy China and the few collies I see in passing are a delight.

I think Binghe's daemon in PIDW would actually be another wolf when it settles, despite his best efforts. Growing up his daemon is almost always in the form of a sheep (to the point people wonder if it has already settled, despite Binghe being far too young for that to happen) because of his subconscious (maybe even instinctual?) need to appear harmless. It's one of the things that triggers Shen Qingqiu's anger at him - it's not unnatural for a daemon to favor one kind of shape or another, even if it's rare for children to stop experimenting early, but something about Binghe's little lamb daemon tickles Shen Qingqiu's paranoia just the wrong way.

Shen Yuan sees nothing wrong with it, but then he doesn't really have the right cultural understanding of the world to really get why it's weird. Of course Binghe's daemon is a little sheep, he's a gentle and sweet little white lotus! Makes perfect sense to him! It's his cruel shizun's awful influence that will make the gentle lamb turn into a ravenous, rabid wolf - he's certain there's some kind of commentary on the cycle of abuse in there, even if only by accident, because he doesn't trust Airplane to write depth if his life depended on it. He's not completely wrong, but he's off the mark enough to be surprised that Binghe's daemon starts taking on canine forms when Shen Qingqiu eases up on targeting him.

In this AU Binghe would probably end up with a wolfdog of sorts, inspired by Shen Yuan's claims that his own daemon used to be a dog too.