Been checking on this and according to my tests aborting the task due to animal etc. interruption seems to work as intended; pauses the pausable tasks and allows continuing them.
However the prompt in case of these externally triggered interruptions is always "Abort task?" with no indication of pausing, so that may cause confusion.
Could it be that you noticed this with tasks that aren't actually pausable? For example, not all the hideworking or trapping tasks are pausable. If you did try it with pausable tasks, let me know the exact tasks you tried and I'll continue checking.
I did my tests with softening phase of tanning of the skin. Here are some screenshots to explain the results:

Task abort is prompted due to dog coming in sight.

The task is aborted, but as it's a pausable task there's still proper message displayed that the task was actually paused.

And the paused craft remains to be be continued at will.