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[DwarfMan69]

I have a lot of dogs (bred from the two i started with), but I don't know what the point of them is. Can anything useful come from dogs?

[Crafty Barnardo]

They can be trained at a kennel into war dogs or hunting dogs.  They can also be slaughtered for meat and bones just like other animals at the buchcer.

[Deon]

war dogs are nice at guarding your entrance and dworfs that roam outside, like woodcutters. They can be assigned through combat screen.

[Untelligent]

1. Make war dogs.
2. Wait for war.

[Andir]

Make "hot dogs" (aka: Chinese food)

[Neonivek]

While I could suggest that you butcher them...

Dogs are absolutely irreplacable when it comes to Fort Defense... Honestly... get some chains... and create the Wardogs... and Defend your fort from thieves.

They are good as hunting dogs too

You can also assign a Wardog to a Squad I believe

[Brent Not Broken]

I like to chain up a few war dogs in strategic spots near the entrance, then cage the rest and link the cages to a lever or pressure plate. It's a fun surprise for goblins who manage to get past my first layer of traps, and caging them cuts down on pathing cpu usage and visual clutter.

[Slappy Moose]

Just make lots for war dogs, then assign them to important dwarves  (super soldiers, double legendarys, etc)

[Derakon]

The problem with assigning war dogs to dwarves is that dogs are invariably more fragile than any reasonably well-equipped dwarf, and when pets die, dwarves get sad. I made the mistake of assigning 10 war dogs to a dwarf once; while his puppy armada broke the siege, man he was sad afterwards.

[Kagus]

However, the "thought queue" cannot hold more thn one instance of each type of bad thought, so losing one dog is the same blow as losing fifteen of them.

At least that's what it looks like from some situations.  More testing is required.  To the kennels!  For science!

[Solara]

quote:Originally posted by Derakon:
<STRONG>The problem with assigning war dogs to dwarves is that dogs are invariably more fragile than any reasonably well-equipped dwarf, and when pets die, dwarves get sad. I made the mistake of assigning 10 war dogs to a dwarf once; while his puppy armada broke the siege, man he was sad afterwards.</STRONG>

This is why I don't assign dogs to my woodcutter anymore - instead, I have him train the dogs personally, this way they'll follow him around even if they don't actually belong to him, and he doesn't care when they die. (which actually makes him kind of an a**hole if you think about it...)

[ May 08, 2008: Message edited by: Solara ]

[RogerN]

Dogs (and kittens) are the perfect tools for detecting ambushes before they get too close to your entrance.  Build several ropes around your fort at a decent distance, and assign animals to the ropes.  Ambushers will reveal themselves by killing your animals first, giving you more time to order your dwarves inside.

You can store excess puppies and kittens in a cage until they're needed to replenish your "front line".  Luckily, animals are never adopted when they're tied up or caged - so you don't have to worry about unhappy thoughts when they die.

[corc]

A few versions ago I thought to assign war dogs(4) to my hunter and after a few seasons the war dogs killed the hunter out of no where and then went on with their dogly duties.

I'm still not sure what happened... there were no ambushes or thieves yet since this was the first year with the original 7 dwarves.  For the longest time I didn't bother with war dogs since I thought they would just randomly kill my fortress, but I've since only seen good war dogs that only kill bad guys :/

As I typed this, I'm wondering if the hunter went out without any arrows and got in a wrestling match with a goat or something and threw the goat... hitting one of the dogs--seems possible.

[Kagus]

Check your announcement log for the time prior to that.  The hunter may have thrown a tantrum or gone berserk.

You can't actually "throw" creatures (except in certain very rare circumstances in adventure mode), and even if you could a hunter without bolts would rather smash the goat with the crossbow.  If the hunter managed to hit the goat hard enough that it flew into one of the dogs, it still wouldn't make them attack him.  The only time they'll attack their owner is if the owner goes berserk or starts a fight with the dogs during a tantrum.