I need to teach Excel a desired span when automatically filling in formulas

Hello, my data looks like this:

A1 dog
A25 cat
A49 goat
A73 cow
A97 sheep
etc.

I need the rows to stay like this. I don't want them to be A1, A2, A3, A4, A5 etc.

Now I need the animals to appear also in the column D, one after another: D1, D2, D3, D4, D5 etc. I need to do it with a formula. So
in D1 I wrote =A1,
in D2 I wrote =A25 and
in D3 I wrote =A49.
Then I highlighted D1-3, then I clicked and held the little black square and I tried to expand the formula, in order to automatically fill in the rest of the animals.

The result was sad.
D4 was =A4 (insted of A73)
D5 was =A27 (instead of A97)
D6 was =A52 etc.
D7 was =A7
D8 was =A30
D9 was =A55

Why isn't Excel smart about this? Why cannot it automatically fill in formulas smartly? Is there any way to teach Excel to make the formulas the way I want, to set the spacing, the span? I'd much appreciate any help with this. I'm sorry if this is not easy to understand, I'm not yet used to working with Excel in English and I may not know the precise terms for things.

Removed by JT

Thanks Ron, this looks very good. I'm just having problems with syntax. Can I just copy your formula or do I have to adjust it in some way?

I just replaced "ROW" with a Czech word. Now it looks better. It works perfect, but only the second animal (cat) is missing. There is zero instead.

Oh wait, my mistake.

Yes Ron, it works just fine. Thank you very much, you've taught me a great thing. Good night from the Czech Republic

Yes, exactly, it was my mistake. The cat got into A24, so I placed it back to A25, I must have done that. Now everythings works fine. This is huge help.