Dogs

"Cry 'Havoc', and let slip the dogs of war!"

- General Chang

Dogs are members of the Canidae family of the order Carnivora. The term is used for both feral and pet varieties. The dog may have been the first animal to be domesticated, and has been the most widely kept working, hunting, and companion animal in human history.

Standard dogs
On the 1960s Irwin Allen television series Land of the Giants, one of the program's main characters, Barry Lockridge, owned a small dog named Chipper who accompanied him on their voyage to Giant World. After their first encounter with the planet's giant human population, Chipper discovered that the canines of this world were equally huge. When a large dog terrorized the group, Chipper barked back, but Barry made sure that he was able to stay safely tucked away until the larger animal could be driven away.

In the TV series Star Trek: Enterprise, the character of Jonathan Archer owns a pet Beagle named Porthos whom he keeps in his quarters aboard the Enterprise NX-01. This is the only instance where an Earth animal was ever allowed to live on board a starship. In the alternate timeline of the 2009 Star Trek movie, engineer Montgomery Scott confesses to doing an experiment on teleportation on the prized Beagle that belonged to that reality's Admiral Archer. Unable to retrieve the animal, Scotty was punished and sent to a research station on the frigid world of Delta Vega.

In the Transformers film series, the central protagonist Sam Witwicky owns a pet Chihuahua named Mojo. In the first film in the series, Mojo suffered a broken leg through unrevealed circumstances and had to wear a cast. Sam carried Mojo's pain medication around with him, which caused him problems later when he was brought into a police station and the officer thought that Sam had been taking them himself.

A woman named Aunt Gladys owned a Pug named Bruiser in her home in Prosperity, Arizona in the 2002 film Eight Legged Freaks. The dog found a hole in the basement of her home, which led into an underground warren occupied by giant mutant spiders. Unfortunately, the dog was killed. Gladys went looking for it and was captured and cocooned by the spiders, but managed to survive.

Dogs are sometimes victims of scientific experimentation or exposure to unidentified strains of disease or vaccines or even extraterrestrial influences. A harsh example of how radiation can effect such animals was briefly referenced in the 1972 film Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. In the year 1983, NASA astronauts returning from space, brought with them a virus that eradicated all dogs and cats, seemingly overnight. Humans as well as most species of apes were immune to the virus. Humanity, in their overwhelming need for pets, turned instead towards keeping apes as pets. This has been informally referred to as the dog and cat plague.

In the Man from Atlantis comic book series, a female warrior named Plaxy operated out of a hidden underground city in the North Pole. She protected her temple through the use of two mutated hounds which she named Cassiopeia and Sirius.

Dogs sometimes hail from other planets, dispelling the notion that the species is somehow indigenous to Earth. One such example can be found on the TV series Stargate SG-1. Dogs are found living on the planet Simarka where a pack of such animals chased down a young boy named Abu.

In the 1992 movie Alien³, a dog becomes a host for an alien symbiont and hatches a xenomorph alien that possessed some physical characteristics to a dog.

Dogs occasionally appeared in sci-fi/horror anthology programs such as Tales from the Crypt. In the season six episode, "Staired in Horror", a Louisiana sheriff had a German Shepherd K9 unit named Gator. He had Gator pursue a fleeing criminal to an old plantation house. The dog nearly became a victim of a cursed staircase that aged him, but managed to retreat just in time.

In the 1996 comedy/horror film Killer Tongue, radiation from a meteor mutates two poodles owned by a woman named Candy into drag queens. This is not the only instance in which poodles are biochemically altered in such a fashion. In the 2003 film The Hulk, scientist Doctor David Banner uses gamma radiation to increase the size and strength of his dogs.

While riding his Harley through Ottawa, the recently injured mutant hero Wolverine lost control of his cycle trying to avoid a fox and a rabbit. While stumbling about in a daze, a pack of wild dogs ran past him.

A New York City street thug named Turk Barrett owned a dog named Brutus. Once, when Daredevil came to interrogate him, he sic'ed Brutus on him, but Daredevil kicked the dog away with a roundhouse.

Somewhere in the Arklay Mountains outside of Raccoon City, a clan destine entity known as the Umbrella Corporation created a bio-weapon dubbed the T-Virus. The virus escaped, causing severe mutations in several animal test subjects, as well as other humans and animals in the surrounding area. A pack of guard dogs were likewise affected, mutating into monstrously rabid undead creatures called Cerberuses.

In the 2002 film Resident Evil, the scientific research company known as the Hive kept Doberman Pincers as guard dogs in their underground facility. When the deadly T-Virus was released, all those infected died and were reanimated as flesh-eating zombies, including the dogs. A former security agent named Alice encountered the bloody, skinless zombie dogs in the kennels and had to dispatch several of them just to escape.

In the "New 52" continuity of DC Comics titles, the character of Harley Quinn owned a pet Dachshund named Queenie. She took Queenie to the beach at Coney Island where it wrestled with a seagull for some food while Harley and her friend Pamela Isley allowed two muscle-heads to massage their feet. They buried one of them, Dave, up to his neck in the sand, after which, Queenie urinated on him.

Notes & Trivia

 * An individual who is in a position of authority and commands respect may be referred to as a "Top Dog". Michael Garibaldi from Babylon 5 has this as a nickname.


 * A person, usually a male, who has indiscriminate sex with another individual or has enough charisma and personality to seduce a person largely considered unobtainable may be called a "dog". The term can be used as both a complement and an insult.


 * A female dog is called a bitch, which is also a derogatory term used to describe an unlikeable woman. One of the most famous "bitches" in sci-fi is the Xenomorph queen alien from the 1986 film Aliens. She earned this nickname after attempting to kill a young girl named Rebecca Jordan when Ellen Ripley shouted at her, "Get away from her, you bitch!"


 * The term "Strontium Dog" is used to describe a class of mutant bounty hunters in the British comic book serial Strontium Dog by Eagle Comics.

Appearances

 * Bionic Woman: Jaime's Mother - Puzzles. Also in flashback.
 * Fear the Walking Dead: The Dog - A dog gets eaten by an infected Peter Dawson.
 * Isis: Lucky - Lucky. Really isn't though since he dies.
 * Isis: The Cheerleader - Stray dog sets his sites on eating Tut.
 * Phoenix: In Search of Mira - German Shepherd hanging out outside shack.
 * Tales from the Crypt: Staired in Horror - Sheriff's German Shepherd K9 unit.
 * Under the Dome: The Fire - A dog named Truman.