I love the 2.5D art, the way the animals hop and flip around is so charming!
I'm not sure if it's some weird optical illusion, but some combination of the overall aspect ratio, the shape of the dog, and the perspective makes moving up and down feel slower and less pleasant than moving sideways. (Actually, it probably is the perspective- if it's on a 3D ground plane with an angled camera, the same distance will feel shorter bc it's squashed by the orthographic camera )
I wonder if manually making the up/down movement faster would help with the gamefeel?