A dog folder can get just as bad. You shoot a some dogs, they get added to dog folder. People like your dog shots you do some more and add them to dog folder then you get a name for being a dog photographer and that's your business. Can't keep all those doggie pics in one folder. Now if you organise location or dogs by smart collections this can grow/become more complex as you go along and images automatically get added to smart collections even if all you did was add a description such as Mumbles Castle/Labrador Puppy to the folder description. Do this with actual physical folders and you are simply digging a hole for yourself.
I think you're taking the folder structure idea too literally. There needs to be a balance between one folder where
all images go as proposed by Kelby (and yes, I think that's what he proposes and the majority of his audience will read it that way) and hundreds or thousands of folders. And it doesn't matter as long as it makes sense
to you. One could create hundreds of folders and subfolders to the point it would confuse them which means, too many folders. Let's take your example above in my usage of folders which is unique solely to me. I have thousands of photo's of dogs, most mine over the years. They are all keyworded with the dog's names. In fact I have a smart collection that does nothing more than to find images without keywords, that's important data to apply to the images. I have a folder called
Santa Fe which is based on that location. I have dogs shot in Santa Fe but they don't go into that folder because IF I were looking for dog images outside the DAM, I know that's where I'd search for them (the Dog folder). It isn't necessary to have Dogs shot in Santa Fe in both folders even with an alias. I know that if I want to find dogs, they are in the dog folder. If you take the folder creation too literally such it confuses you where to look outside the DAM, the organization system is broken, it's too complex.
There is a reason we have keywords, pick flags, star ratings and all kinds of other metadata fields we can use to find images inside the DAM. The idea of using folders is to avoid the one folder for all images but at the same time, avoid so many folders it is a nightmare to understand. All one needs to do is come up with a system that makes sense to them. My folder structure makes perfect sense to me, I could have a Dog plus Santa Fe plus dog name keyword all in one image, I don't have to duplicate anything like that for the folder structure.
An organized folder structure isn't supposed to be a foolproof DAM bypass. It's supposed to be a method whereby if you have to find images outside the DAM, it's easier than one big folder with all images. Or three (Person/Place/Thing). But it isn't a system for finding any and all images solely by virtue of the folder name. If you have 1000 dog images in the dog folder and get a cat, nothing stops you from either creating a Cat subfolder OR just renaming the folder
Dog and Cat. But you'd be pretty sure the new cat images were not in the folder called
Sydney or
Epson Print Academy or even
Santa Fe. And that alone is kind of useful. At least to me.
In the end, one folder, 59 folders, 5890 folders, it's up to you. If it makes sense, if you can find your images, doesn't matter.