Little dog

The little dog,, is one of the most famous NetHack monsters - it has served as the starting pet for the player ever since Hack 1.0, although in recent times you also have the option of starting with a kitten for a starting pet (knights will get a pony instead). They are capable of growing up into dogs.

The little dog and his more experienced brethren are better fighters than newly started characters and can be used to fight for you in the early stages of the game. Nevertheless, they may be more vulnerable than newly started characters against passive attacks, such as acidic monsters or floating eyes. They also are extremely vulnerable to falling rock traps and rolling boulder traps and many have been lost within the first hundred turns of a game to this.

Little dogs can be tamed with tripe, fortune cookies, or some edible corpses if they are fresh.