The Dogs
It is the dogs who bring the ox into the courtroom to stand trial for goring the driver. This act immediately makes them suspect in the eyes of the Lion who is presiding as judge:
“The Dogs offered themselves as witnesses, which the Judge refused, as they were thief-takers, and interested.”
"Thief-taker" refers to an old English custom in which private individuals acted as law enforcement officials for the express purpose of getting them to court. Consider the term to be somewhat on part with the modern-day "bounty hunter." Somewhat. The point being that this can only be a metaphorical reference as there is no particular evidence to support the judge's claim other than a poem which occurs at the end:
"This Dog led the Ox to his trial,
For killing the man at the fair;
From duty he took no denial,
And bade him of mischief beware."
Why Then, Not the Dogs?
Which raises the question: why did the Judge decide to refuse to hear the testimony of the dogs? He immediately makes clear what he seems to expect from the Dogs when he informs them that:
“if a point of law should arise, they might speak to it, but he would have no witness brow-beaten or misled in that court.”
Brow-beating is, of course, an old but still widely used metaphor for witness intimidation in regard to this usage.
The Judge
The animal picked specifically to fill the role of a wise arbiter of justice in the animal world can be viewed through a metaphorical lens. The Judge is, after all, a lion. And lions are, in turn, known metaphorically as “king of the beasts [or, sometimes, the jungle]" So, as king, it would certainly make sense that a lion would also sit in judgment.
Tiger, Tiger
The only literal appearance of a tiger is in the role of lawyer. Which, metaphorically speaking, also makes a kind of sense if you want to take the approach of comparing the quite, still, predatory focus of a tiger with that of an attorney. Fortunately, in his argument, the Tiger makes one of the few direct metaphors found (actually, two of them) in the story:
“Man, the two legged Tiger man, is the most ungrateful of beasts.”
A Shakespearean Bee
A more obliquely stated direct metaphor arrives courtesy of the primary witness for the defense of the Ox: a bee. What’s more, the metaphorical reference he makes is actually a literary allusion which derives from Shakespeare. The Bee, in comparing the meat market inside a town, argues:
“do you think the queen of my hive would suffer us to bring home what we make boot upon?”
The allusion here is actually quite direct and especially appropriate: it is a from a soliloquy in Shakespeare’s historical play Henry V:
“For so work the honey-bees,
Creatures that by a rule in nature teach
The act of order to a peopled kingdom.
...
Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings,
Make boot upon the summer’s velvet buds”
