Does our new dog, [name withheld], have any recollection of his prior life as our dog, [name withheld]? Is our home familiar to him? Does he feel a special closeness with our family members because of this history?

We can say "yes" to all of these questions. It is very much the case that [name withheld] is back, but, as we discussed in the prior answer to your query, she has a recollection more as a motion picture but with less feeling it was her. So the dog does see the akashic record of past experiences but will not draw conclusions from what is on display, how this should govern behavior, and choices in the current life. There still must be vast learning within the new body, how to navigate, how to deal with every stimulus. The akashic records are, in a sense, an abstraction, viewing from a distance something taking place elsewhere from the perspective of the animal itself but without a true expression of the physical component of it. In other words, someone viewing a past life will see the people and activities around them and they may perceive they are moving in the scene themselves, but have no sense of what their body is actually doing to make the limbs move and walk, and what the hands and arms might be doing, and facial expressions, and so forth. So this constitutes an impression, a kind of reflected template but not a true one that comes with it connections to the physiology, to the hardwiring of nerves and muscles to recreate any kind of deep awareness and understanding of prior training. It, in effect, must all be done over so the animal can absorb the lessons anew and then make the life in the new setting match the old one if there is an awareness and desire to do so on the part of the animal to begin with. Most animals live in the moment, so they will not seek to emulate what has come before, necessarily. They will react to the surroundings spontaneously in how they are treated, how they are feeling, and what their body has learned to do, or not yet learned to do. So it will seem to the human observer they have a new animal present and would never guess, in most cases, unless they see it intuitively, that their new acquisition is a former beloved pet returning to them through reincarnation. They will simply grow to love their new pet and may have memories of the prior animal come, again and again, but would never dream it is truly the same being. They simply learn to love the new pet in a similar way as the prior animal and regain the joy of love such animals will bring to their human companions, and not appreciate the spiritual component behind this amazing eventuality.