Isn't "The Thing" as an entity a bit inconsistent?...

I've watched this a million times, easily one of my favorite movies...but long ago I've come to the realization that the actual alien/thing/cloning procedure is wildly inconsistent and that I would just need to accept that.

For instance...

The Thing Dog...first of all, when the Norwegian got shot, if the dog can infect people with its saliva, it would have been super easy to just infect the entire camp at that point...MacReady and the boys had no idea yet why the Norwegian was even yelling at them. From the dogs perspective...just lick a bunch of faces...and after that, simply go on a biting spree for the last few guys who wouldn't let you near their faces for a kiss. Easy peasy, movie over.

But forget that...think of the different ways assimilation happens or is explained.

1) The Thing Dog started to spray the other dogs with some sort of liquid.
2) Bennings began getting assimilated when he was alone on the table. Probably infected first, but still, seemed to be a much different way than others were getting assimilated.
3) Everyone agrees it rips all your clothing when you get assimilated...yet Bennings clothing wasn't ripped...nor Garry's...no clothes ripping ever seemed to occur on camera.
4) When Garry got assimilated by Blair...Blair's hand covered Garry's mouth, then his hand began merging with Garry's mouth. Seems different than what the dog was trying to do, or how Bennings got assimilated.
5) Creatures with legs started emerging from some of the people that were previously assimilated. Did Bennings have one of these creatures in him? If so, it didn't try to escape the fire like it did later in the movie when one was inside Norris. If Bennings didn't have a creature in him, why did Norris, and vice versa?
6) One guy who got assimilated, Norris I believe, grew teeth in his stomach...he somehow anticipated getting dissected later to put them to use.
7) Everyone says the clones are "perfect" clones...yet one had stomach teeth? Doesn't seem like a perfect clone to me! That's a very different feature than humans have. I would have started checking everyone's stomach after Copper's arms got bitten off.

There's a few other items but I'm running out of space! What do u think?