Domestic animal

List of domestic animals

These monsters are domestic:^[1]

Taming

Throwing a treat, a suitable corpse, or certain other food may tame a domestic animal and make it a pet.^[2]^[3]^[4]

Food sufficient for taming a domestic carnivore (any cat or dog):

tripe ration
huge chunk of meat, meatball, meat ring, or meat stick
any safe non-vegan corpse (unsafe corpses include anything acidic, poisonous, petrifying, or tainted)
food ration, cram ration, lembas wafer, K-ration, or C-ration
candy bar, pancake, lump of royal jelly, fortune cookie

An egg or cream pie would also work, but they usually splat when you throw them. (Except for petrifying eggs, of course, those do worse than splat.)

Food sufficient for taming a domestic herbivore (any horse):

apple, banana, orange, pear, or slime mold
carrot, clove of garlic, kelp frond, eucalyptus leaf, or sprig of wolfsbane
lichen corpse

A melon would also work, but they usually splat when you throw them.

The beatitude of the thrown food does not matter.

Certain other monsters may be tamed with food as well, such as monkeys and apes, even though they are not domestic.

A shapeshifter in the form of a domestic animal can be tamed, and will remain tame even as it changes forms.

At night during a full moon, dogs are more likely to resist taming.^[5]

Pacification

If a domestic animal is not tamed by thrown food, it may be pacified, even if the item is something that the domestic animal would not normally eat. Nearly any food will pacify a carnivorous domestic animal (cat or dog). Even a tin will do. Only a veggy food item will pacify an herbivorous domestic animal (horse).

For example, throwing a carrot or a lichen corpse will pacify a dog, and throwing a food ration or a fortune cookie will pacify a horse.

Pacifying will make the domestic animal peaceful and remove any fear effects.

Other differences

A tame domestic animal starts with a tameness of 10; any other tame monster starts with a tameness of 5.^[6]

A domestic animal which can be saddled (i.e. a horse) has a ¹⁄₁₀₀ chance of being equipped with a saddle when it is generated.^[7]

Eating the corpse of certain domestic animals confers the aggravate monster intrinsic, unless the character is a Caveman or an Orc.^[8] Relevant monsters are cats and dogs, but not horses.

History

In NetHack 3.6.0 and earlier versions, throwing any food item would pacify an herbivorous domestic animal (horse).

NetHack 3.6.1 introduced the chance of a saddle-able domestic animal being generated with a saddle.

Variants

SLASH'EM

SLASH'EM adds the following domestic animals:^[9]

c chicken
c cockatoo
c parrot
d pit bull
q lamb
q sheep
q goat
q cow
q bull
z koala (only tameable with eucalyptus leaves)^[10]
z wombat

Also, some animals in SLASH'EM can be tamed or pacified with specific foods; throwing other kinds of comestibles at them has no pacifying effect.^[11]

Tameable with cheese: