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

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 the character is an orc 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 dogname is not set. The following roles always start with a little dog, who will be given the appropriate default name if dogname is not 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.

A little dog is one of the pet monsters that can be created via the spell of create familiar, with a default ¹⁄₆ chance if no preferred pet type is set.

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, eggs, and melons 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. During a full moon, little dogs have a ⁵⁄₆ chance of becoming peaceful instead of tame when throwing acceptable food to them, and further thrown acceptable food rolls this same chance of taming without angering them.

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. Keep an eye out for little dogs and other similar domestic animals while exploring - those with an interest in exotic pets may wish to tame and then polymorph a little dog they encounter, e.g. using a wand of polymorph or a leash near a polymorph trap. Running across a named little dog is also one of many signs that you are on a bones level.

As pets

The starting little dog can be invaluable in the early stages of the game: they move at 18 speed and have a bite attack that can make early hostile monsters into easy kills, and lucky little dogs can survive fights if they avoid enough counterattack triggers. Conversely, they are not smart enough to avoid monsters with passive attacks, such as acid blobs or floating eyes, and starting pets are weaker than their wild counterparts within the dungeon. They also are extremely vulnerable to traps such as falling rock traps and rolling boulder traps (sometimes called "puppy pounders"), and many are killed by one within the first hundred turns of a game.

Chatting with a tamed little dog can provide an idea of how it is feeling.

Below is a table describing how much weight in objects a domestic carnivore at a particular stage of growth can carry, which is generally applicable for credit cloning and otherwise ripping off shopkeepers - remember that cats and dogs can only pick up a single object at a time:

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

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.

In NetHack 3.4.3 and earlier versions, including some variants based on those versions, little dogs are capable of picking up item stacks so long as that stack does not exceed their carrying capacity.

Origin

The dog (Canis familiaris or Canis lupus familiaris) is a domesticated descendant of a now-extinct species of gray wolves, with the living gray wolves being their closest living relative. The dog was the first species to be domesticated by humans, with evidence of pre-agricultural hunter-gatherers keeping dogs as far back as 15,000 years ago. Dogs have been selectively bred over millennia for various behaviors, sensory capabilities, and physical attributes, with breeds varying widely in shape, size, and color, and thrive on a starch-rich diet that would be inadequate for other canids. Dogs are omnivorous, rather than carnivorous as in NetHack.

A pet dog performs many roles for humans, such as hunting, herding, pulling loads, protection, assisting police and the military, companionship, therapy, and aiding disabled people. Over the millennia, dogs became uniquely adapted to human behavior, and the human–canine bond has been a topic of frequent study. This influence on human society has given them the sobriquet of "man's best friend". Naturally, 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 - another dog, Dogmeat from the first Fallout game, occupies the number 2 spot.

In the first edition of Dungeons & Dragons, dogs appear in two forms: war dogs are simply loyal large dogs trained to fight by their masters, displaying ferocity in battle, and are typically protected by light studded leather armor and a spiked collar; wild dogs inhabit most regions, with pack habitats sometimes overlapping with those of wolves, and well-fed wild dogs simply avoid contact - a wild dog can only be tamed if separated from their pack. As in the real world, Dungeons & Dragons also incorporates various dog breeds, both mundane and fantastic, over its several editions.

Messages

<The little dog> howls.

You chatted to a little dog while it is night time during a full moon, regardless of other circumstances.

<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 square with 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 peaceful or tame little dog, and none of the above conditions apply.

<The little dog> growls.

You chatted to a hostile little dog.

Variants

SLASH'EM

In SLASH'EM, little dogs and their other growth stages have their frequency raised to 7. They also do not randomly generate in Gehennom.

A little dog is generated on the second map of the Mall at level creation. Little dogs appear among the random d that are part of the second quest monster class for Yeomen and make up ⁶⁄₁₇₅ of the monsters randomly generated on the Yeoman quest.

All of the above information also applies to SlashTHEM.

UnNetHack

In UnNetHack, a little dog is generated on the first map of the Town branch's shop-filled floor at level creation.

TNNT (the game)

In TNNT (the game), little dogs named Yermak, Rocky and Fudd each have a ¹⁄₅ chance of being generated within the DevTeam Office rooms behind secret doors at level creation.

One of the TNNT achievements requires the initial pet to survive to its last growth stage, e.g. the starting little dog has to become a large dog.

SlashTHEM

In addition to SLASH'EM details, SlashTHEM also includes the Town branch and the map containing the little dog.

Hack'EM

In Hack'EM, little dogs and their other growth stages that can generate randomly (i.e. excluding the guard dog) have their frequency raised to 3 rather than 7, and can randomly generate in Gehennom - all other SLASH'EM details apply. Hack'EM also includes the Town branch, which both includes the map that appears in SlashTHEM and UnNetHack and the Mall maps from SLASH'EM.

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.