Dogs, primarily brave, useful things (7)
I believe the answer is:
bassets
'dogs' is the definition.
(basset is a kind of dog)
'primarily brave useful things' is the wordplay.
'primarily' says to take the initial letters.
'useful things' becomes 'assets' (I've seen this before).
The first letter of 'brave' is 'b'.
'b'+'assets'='BASSETS'
(Other definitions for bassets that I've seen before include "Dogs" , "Hounds with short legs and long ears" .)