Little dog
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:
| |
| Reference | monst.c#line226 |
A little dog, d, is a type of monster that appears in NetHack. It is a small and carnivorous domestic canine that can be seen via infravision. Little dogs can be tamed by throwing any type of meat or rations that they can eat at them, and can be pacified by throwing veggy food at them.
A little dog has a single bite attack.
Eating a little dog corpse or tin will confer the aggravate monster intrinsic, unless you are an orcish character or a Caveman.
Chatting to a little dog will give various responses, depending on its tameness and condition.
Generation
Randomly generated little dogs may generate as peaceful towards neutral characters. A little dog can grow up into a dog.
The little dog is one of the most commonplace starting pets in NetHack - every role can start with a little dog as their default pet, with the exception of both the Knight (who receives a saddled pony) and the Wizard (who always receives a kitten). A Barbarian's starting little dog will be named Idefix if no name is given. The following roles always start with a little dog, who will be given the appropriate default name if no name is specified:
- Cavemen start with a little dog named Slasher.
- Rangers start with a little dog named Sirius.
- Samurai start with a little dog named Hachi.
Little dogs appear among the random d that are part of the first quest monster class for Samurai and make up 24⁄175 of the monsters randomly generated on the Samurai quest.
Strategy
As hostile monsters, little dogs can be annoying or even threatening to early characters that do not have a spare food item to throw in order to get them off their back - cream pies and eggs are not suitable choices, since they will splatter on the little dog's face. Veggy food such as lichen corpses will reliably pacify a hostile little dog without giving up a food source. Once a character finds their footing and establishes a basic kit, they may want to keep a veggy food item such as an apple or pear around to pacify little dogs and other domestic carnivores they do not want to fight or keep as pets.
As pets
The starting little dog that many characters enter the dungeon with can be invaluable in the early stages of the game: they move at 18 speed and have a bite attack that can make quick work of early hostiles or weaken them enough for you to finish off. The fact that pets do not always trigger counterattacks allow them to avoid damage, which can be enough for them to survive fights.
Conversely, little dogs and other starting pets are weaker than their wild counterparts within the dungeon, and are not smart enough to avoid monsters with passive attacks, such as acid blobs or floating eyes - they also are extremely vulnerable to traps such as falling rock traps and rolling boulder traps (and sometimes called "puppy pounders"), and many are killed by one within the first hundred turns of a game.
You can chat with a tamed little dog to get an idea of how it is feeling.
History
The little dog first appears in Hack for PDP-11, which is based on Jay Fenlason's Hack - pets were not present in Hack 1.21, suggesting that they were an early addition by Andries Brouwer, and the little dog is part of the initial bestiary for Hack 1.0.
The little dog serves as the default pet from Hack for PDP-11 and Hack 1.0 to NetHack 2.3e. In NetHack 3.0.0, the kitten is introduced and becomes an alternate starting pet option: the Caveman will always start with a little dog, the Wizard will always start with a kitten, and other roles will randomly receive one of either. NetHack 3.0.8 allows an option of either pet to be set for characters in other roles. The Samurai's default little dog is introduced in NetHack 3.1.0. NetHack 3.3.0 adds the default little dog for Rangers and establishes the saddled pony as the Knight's starting pet.
Origin
Dogs are an iconic video game pet, to the point that the little dog from NetHack was ranked number 6 on Gamespy's top 10 list of video game sidekicks.
Messages
- <The little dog> howls.
- You chatted to a little dog while it is night time during a full moon.
- <The little dog> whines.
- Your tame little dog is hungry, caught in a trap, confused, scared, or at low tameness. A leashed little dog that is near a trap will whine on its own.
- <The little dog> barks.
- A tame little dog will become hungry in 1000 turns or less, or you chatted to a peaceful little dog.
- <The little dog> yips.
- You chatted to a little dog, and none of the above conditions apply.
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.
