There's nothing wrong with putting anything in your app that you think will help. Within reason, I think the general rule for most vet schools is that if they don't value something, they just ignore it. They don't "dock" you for having something in there they feel isn't important. I certainly included pet ownership ... I even included my hours working a dairy farm, which was 20 years ago.
That said, those things are all really trivial, and if you got rejected at several schools and wait-listed at one, they probably aren't going to be enough by themselves to change your results. You need to do an objective, thorough evaluation of why you didn't get accepted, and it needs to start with talking to the schools you got rejected from and asking them why. And then you need to take what they tell you, make it into a list of weaknesses, and prioritize it based on a) which ones you CAN improve, and b) which ones give you the most bang-for-buck on the application. And then you need to start chopping away at the list.
It's not really magic or anything. I mean, I'm not saying "don't put that stuff on your app". I did, and I would encourage you to. But that's likely not your problem here. It just seems like there are a lot of people that re-apply year after year without any really organized approach to identifying their weaknesses and correcting them. That's a lot of wasted time, effort, and money.