Mikey - You've got it in one - but a few comments might help.
Your attitude that you have to clear the animals out to make it habitable for you might be true in you waking world - though I think it might be a mistake - but in the inner world of dreams every animal is a functioning and useful aspect of yourself.
Also you believe the image of your body is you - your arm being bitten - but it is just an image that we create through and with our imaginations and fears.
"I walked toward it and stretched out my hand. It was a tan colour with short fur and gave a feeling of being okay to approach, so I touched it to stroke. This was okay and I was thinking there was no problem when the creature leapt at my throat in a flash of movement and ripped my throat out. This sounds disturbing but I simply observed this and thought to myself that stroking and trying to be friendly was no way of dealing with this thing. It was as if I was in command of the imagery so I simply formed another body by imagining it."
Why not find out why the stag is biting you, and why you need to clear your space to live in? The creature that ripped out my throat was my own feelings about my mother who I wanted to kill. When I met them as an observer they cleared and I understood why and where such feelings had arisen and why they were still active inside me.
Here is another approach to the primitive in us.
For the great beast I saw in the rocks, were an image behind which lay the realisation that the extraordinary process of life has struggled through unimaginable periods of time, and we are the expression of it. Although it appears like a great and ancient beast, it is full of mystery and magic. It has brought about living beings in incredible variety. It has possibilities we cannot even guess at. Within itself it holds the secrets of creation and destruction, of sleep and waking, of the intricacies of mind and spirit. It has unimaginable power and tenacity. It is beyond us and yet intimately of very core of self. We relate to it, we enliven it, we call it out or imprisonment by every act we do.
As I looked at this beast I noticed that its eyes were being hurt. Arrows were being fired at its eyes, and javelins thrown. I wondered who could be doing this, and stepped forward to take out the javelins and the arrows. I wondered what the arrows and javelins could be, and was it I throwing them, firing them? Gradually it clarified that we continually injure this wonderful process in us. Consciousness is a special state that acts in all manner of ways for this great ancient being or process that is behind our existence. Consciousness is its eyes and ears, its fingers and mouth, its means of experience, and its way of learning. And whatever we feed back to that fundamental part of us is deeply felt. Perhaps this is not a very accurate description, but it is like a loving and willing dog that out of its instinctive being tries to do all that we ask of it, tries to grow, and tries to learn.
But it is so sensitive, so when we are angry with it, repress it or frustrated with it, or direct criticism at it, it cowers, it feels failure, its exuberance diminishes. So also with this great wonderful beast within, this mysterious process of life that is at our core. It withdraws. But we can also call it out into further expression, enabling it to extend beyond its previous capabilities, by loving it, by acknowledging its wonder, by calling it forth.
You do not need to fight them/yourself, but to make peace with yourself/them - the gold is always there hidden behind your own creative function that hides it from you.
Tony