How is Lennie's treatment of his dead puppy typical of his character?

One of the first instances of Lennie's character occurs in
chapter 1 when we see how he treats the dead mouse. He doesn't seem to really care that
the mouse is even dead, but he cares to be able to pet soft
things. We can assume the same is true in the dress of the woman that he
was touching when they were in Weed and got chased out because of
that.

Death doesn't really register to Lennie as
significant. He doesn't even care that his puppy is gone, he cares that he's going to
get in trouble.

This shows a couple of things about
Lennie's character worth noting. First, it demonstrates that Lennie has little concept
of relationship, animal, or the significance of life - it can be snuffed out and gone in
an instant. Second, if these traits are typical, they might foreshadow the climax of the
story. In most literature, when character traits are revealed and repeated, they are
done so for a reason, watch for the coming reason of being able to identify the trait of
Lennie's facination for soft things.