# Dog
Little dogs, dogs, and large dogs (all d) are carnivorous domestic animals and can be tamed with tripe, food rations, fortune cookies, or edible corpses if they are fresh. (While in reality dogs are omnivores, in NetHack they are treated as carnivores.)
Eating the corpse of any domestic dog has similar consequences to cannibalism: it will give you the aggravate monster intrinsic, but it will not decrease your luck. Cavemen and orcs are exempt from this penalty. Regardless of your alignment, sacrificing a dog corpse is harmless (though sacrificing a pet corpse is not).

Contents

1 Types of dog

1.1 Little dog
1.2 Dog
1.3 Large dog

2 Pet dogs

2.1 Dog names

3 SLASH'EM
4 Encyclopedia entry

Types of dog
Little dog

d little dog 

Difficulty

3

Attacks

Bite 1d6

d little dog 

Difficulty

3

Attacks

Bite 1d6

Base level

2

Base experience

20

Speed

18

Base AC

6

Base MR

0

Alignment

0 (neutral)

Frequency (by normal means)

1 (Very rare)

Genocidable

Yes

Weight

150

Nutritional value

150

Size

Small

Resistances

None

Resistances conveyed

Intrinsic aggravate monster

A little dog:

 has no hands.

 is an animal.

 is carnivorous.

 can be tamed by feeding.

 can be seen through infravision.

Reference

monst.c#line226

The little dog is one of the most famous NetHack monsters—it has served as the starting pet for the player ever since Hack 1.0, although in recent times you also have the option of starting with a kitten for a starting pet (knights will get a pony instead). They are capable of growing up into dogs.
The little dog and its more experienced brethren are sometimes better fighters than newly started characters and can be used to fight for you in the early stages of the game. Nevertheless, they may be more vulnerable than newly started characters against passive attacks, such as acidic monsters or floating eyes. They also are extremely vulnerable to falling rock traps and rolling boulder traps and many be killed by one within the first hundred turns of a game.

Dog

d dog 

Difficulty

5

Attacks

Bite 1d6

d dog 

Difficulty

5

Attacks

Bite 1d6

Base level

4

Base experience

44

Speed

16

Base AC

5

Base MR

0

Alignment

0 (neutral)

Frequency (by normal means)

1 (Very rare)

Genocidable

Yes

Weight

400

Nutritional value

200

Size

Medium

Resistances

None

Resistances conveyed

Intrinsic aggravate monster

A dog:

 has no hands.

 is an animal.

 is carnivorous.

 can be tamed by feeding.

 can be seen through infravision.

Reference

monst.c#line233

The dog is a grown-up little dog and is therefore usually encountered as a player's pet. They are capable of growing up into large dogs.
As with their brethren, they are excellent fighters to have as companions to early game characters, but remain vulnerable to passive attacks. They may have trouble with watch captains in Minetown, although regular watchmen shouldn't pose too much trouble.

Large dog

d large dog 

Difficulty

7

Attacks

Bite 2d4

d large dog 

Difficulty

7

Attacks

Bite 2d4

Base level

6

Base experience

76

Speed

15

Base AC

4

Base MR

0

Alignment

0 (neutral)

Frequency (by normal means)

1 (Very rare)

Genocidable

Yes

Weight

800

Nutritional value

250

Size

Medium

Resistances

None

Resistances conveyed

Intrinsic aggravate monster

A large dog:

 has no hands.

 is an animal.

 is carnivorous.

 can be tamed by feeding.

 is strong.

 can be seen through infravision.

Reference

monst.c#line240

The large dog is a grown-up dog and is therefore usually encountered as a player's pet (especially with early game characters, as they are easy to obtain by training their little dog).
As with their brethren, they are excellent fighters to have as companions to early-game characters, but remain vulnerable to passive attacks. Eventually, it may be worthwhile to attempt to upgrade your large dog to another monster using a polymorph trap, especially if you have more than one pet.

Pet dogs
Dogs are the iconic NetHack pet. The little dog even made Gamespy's top 10 list of video game sidekicks. Many roles begin the game with one.
Taming wild dogs is usually easy, because all sizes of dog are considered domestic animals. Throwing a meaty treat, a safe fresh meat-based corpse, or processed human food at a hostile or peaceful dog will tame it. Throwing any other comestible at a dog will at least render it peaceful, with the exception of cream pies and eggs (which will break on impact).
As an additional challenge, if it is night and the moon is full, dogs are harder to tame with food; there is only a 1 in 6 chance of success.
All meaty treats can be used to train your dog to fetch.
You can #chat with your dog to get an idea of how it is feeling:

at night when the moon is full, it will always howl.
it will whine if it is hungry, caught in a trap, confused, fleeing, or tameness is getting low.
if the dog is leashed, and there is a trap nearby, it will whine without you #chatting to it. This works even if the trap is undetected.
if it will be hungry soon (1000 turns or less), it will bark.
the rest of the time it will yip.

Pet type

Corpse wt

Can carry unassisted

in uncursed bag of holding

in blessed bag of holding

kitten/little dog
150
51
72
144

housecat/dog
200 / 400
68 / 137
106 / 244
212 / 488

large cat/large dog
250 / 800
1000
1970
3940

Dog names
The classes which always have a dog as a starting pet each have a unique name for their starting little dog. If dogname is not set, the little dog will automatically be given one of these names, according to the player's class.

Class

Dog name

Caveman

Slasher

Ranger

Sirius

Samurai

Hachi

Barbarian*

Idefix

* Barbarians are not limited to only dogs

SLASH'EM
In SLASH'EM, dogs and cats frequency is very high instead of rare. 

Encyclopedia entry

A domestic animal, the _tame dog_ (_Canis familiaris_), of
which numerous breeds exist.  The male is called a dog,
while the female is called a bitch.  Because of its known
loyalty to man and gentleness with children, it is the
world's most popular domestic animal.  It can easily be
trained to perform various tasks.

 

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