I apologize if this has been suggested, but a forum stearch for the word "dog" did not reveal anything in the first sixty results, so I hope you can forgive me if I am retreading old ground.
In any case, now that animal ranching has extended to things like having to pasture grazing animals to get them to eat, I think a logical next step would be to allow animal trainers to train dogs for a sheparding role. Such dogs would more or less just be given a set of labors to help in managing free-range animals. So for example, the sheparding dogs could take tasks for leading animals around that would normally be served by dwarvers. Or when a sheparding dog is near a grazing animal, the proximity will cause the grazer to move a little faster due to the dog barking at it to get moving. Maybe have the dogs naturally dift themselves over to animal pastures, the way unpastured animals drift to meeting zones. That way the dog can keep an eye on them and be ready to move them when necessary, or let out an alert if an ambush is nearby, thanks to the dog's superior Observer skill.
I am thinking that this would primarily be useful when a siege comes around, and the dogs would help get all the pastured grazers inside safty burrows more quickly than they would get there on their own. And it seems like a sensible use for dogs as well.
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Topic: Herding dogs (Read 797 times)