While I wouldn't mind some armor on my werewolves I think they are in a pretty good place. Just hide them in a corner when they are wounded. Shotguns and autofire can make short work of them, but that is to be expected.
Regular reapers are pretty bad though. 2x2 makes them easy to hit and they are not that tough. Even on base defence mine usually just stay where they are. On the plus side they are very cuddly.
Mutated reapers are decent. Still not great, but they are cute animals that can spit acid and are reasonably tough.
The Booze-O-Saurus is great if you have the space. X-Grog got nerfed a bit with the freshness system, but on a hot mission or when the Iridians used the mission area as testing ground for chemical weapons it has all the grog needed to keep everyone up and running.
Dogs are too squishy to waste space on a transport on them unless everyone else is in the sickbay, and they run out of energy quickly. Blood Hounds are a bit better, but still nothing I would carry if I have a choice. Haven't tried the named ones yet.
Never used cats, parrots are great scouts and the robo parrot is even better. 30 armor and good night vision, it is basically your very own academy drone, but with a cooler casemod. I got one in January from an event in a new game and I take it on almost every mission