101 uses for DOG.

[KathiraNarae]

This is probably going to be mildly humerous, but it certainly isn't serious enough for the University unless you need to join the esteemed Mock in the crusade to make the University happier.

Bit dogs are amazing. They are cuddly, cute, courageous clowns, and there are many uses for them. 101, in fact, and I may well have missed some. I own three small lunatics, though some may have more or less lunatics of varying sizes. But any real dog-lover would never change their pet, and would only give their bundle of adorable to another loving home, and only them if they absolutely had to. And there are many other uses too, not just as pets. So, I present...

101 uses for DOG A work in progress, updated daily.

1) Companion
Okay, this one's obvious. Dogs make great companions, whether you are lonely or not, and will love their owner forever. They will be there to greet you when you come home from work, they will love you no matter who or what youare, they will cuddle you when you need it, they will always be there for you. Always.

2) Alert
Dogs have very good hearing, and will always do their best to protect their owner if necessary. To that end, they will often raise the alarm by barking if there is a burglar, or if someone knocks on the door, or if somone walks past the front of the house. Sometimes, the alert will actually be raised less out of 'Must protect owner' and from 'ooh, person, can I go say hello, can I, can I, can I?' But the protection does have it's merits, since there's another use tied right into this one.

3) Guardian
If their owner is threatened, a dog will try and protect them. While they will alert you to a someone being near you, they will attack if that someone threatens you. Dogs are loyal to a fault and will become viscious bitey monsters if their owner is attacked..particularly the hard-mouthed dogs. As small as she is, you would not want my terrier to bite you, and she would if someone threatened me. Provided she was awake (more on that later). But there's another kind of protection a dog can give.

4) Suicide preventation
A dog can work all kinds of miracles, including giving someone about to commit suicide a reason to live. There was a veteran of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia who almost commited suicide because of what he'd seen. But he owned an adorable pit bull puppy who saved his life when he was about to shoot himself by licking his ear from behind. That stopped the veteran from killing himself, all because of a little puppy and the power of DOG. This wasn't a single incident, either. A German Shepherd Saved a woman who pinted her rifle at her own heart from suicide by leaping at it's owner to divert the shot from being fatal. Dogs will also prevent their owner's unhappiness when it isn't resulting in suicide as well, though.

5) Cheering up
To be honest, dogs always seem to want their owners happy. Sometimes it's happiness from performing a trick, sometimes it's happiness from playing them. But regardless, if an owner is unhappy for any reason, the dog will try to cheer their person up. I used to own a spaniel who one day, when I was ill and hating it, deliberately misbehaved in a mischeivioue, not-actually-being-bad kind of way. She was clowing around, and that put a smile right back onto my face. Cheering up can be from the joys of just cuddling a dog, having an adorable, usually fluffy little thing ont your lap, or stroking the big hairy giant snuggled next to you on a sofa. And speaking of cuddles...

6) Hairy foot warmer
Dogs are mammals, which means they almost radiate heat. This can be very useufl if you have cold feet: simply have your dog lie on top of them. Dogs can wamr up any part of you this way, too: hairy chest warmer, hairy back warmer, hairy head warmer...Hairless dogs were even bred specifically for this purpoes of being a hot water bottle. I think I prefer the hairy ones, though, they're nicer.

7) Deity
So, it can be joked that dog is a dyslexic's deity. Understandable, when I explain the joke: 'dog' is 'god' backwards. I will admit, I've always though that dogs were way better than god, but many religions have actually worshipped dogs in some way. A Ninisina temple in Mesopotamia was found to contain many scritpures and drawings of dogs, and one particular branch of Mesopotamian myths reffered to dogs as divinity.
An ancient Iranian religion believed that DOG was an especially beneficent, clean and righteous creature, which must be fed and taken care of, and whose gaze could purify and drive off demons. These guys also believed that dogs guarded the afterlife, which Hindus today also believe. Hindus revere dogs as a part of a five-day Tihar festival that falls roughly in November every year, by applying tika (the holy vermilion dot), incense sticks and garlanded generally with marigold flower.
Then there's the ancient Egyptians. Despite being primarily cat people, and having an entire goddess for cats (Bast/Bastet), they revered dogs themselves, particularly as regards the underworld and later mummification, as these were the domains of jackel-headed Anubis. And the reason why they liked cats is also a use of DOG.

8 ) Vermin extermination
Terriers. A bunch of breed, usually small, usually hard-mouthed, originally working dogs for one primary purpose. Rat-catcher. Rats were a big problem down the ages, and it's the rat problem that led to the taming of cats (sort of). But DOG was useful for this job as well, and that's where terriers come from. They're fast (as anyone who had to try and catch mine can attest), they're quick biters, they're small, and their teeth can be quite vicious (as anyone who's played with my terrier can attest). These dogs would be trained to hunt, catch, and kill rodents of any size, unusual or not, and helped to keep the vermin population down. Nowadays, I think only cats are used for this, which has led to terriers becoming pets rather than workers, but they are no less loving. You can go on about the snappiness of a Jack Russell, but my current terriers and the one before her were both Jack Russell/Patterdale crosses and the Patterdale apparently removes all snappiness and turns them into right softies. Believe me.

9) Unwanted cuddly toy/cardboard tube disposal
If you have a dog and they like to play and you don't mind clearing up afterwards too much, then don;t just toss out old cuddly toys and loo/kitchen roll tubes. Let your dog have them, play a bit of tug-of-war and fetch with them and watch them have a lot of fun shredding the new toy. Everyone's probably familiar with the cuddly disposal, but my dogs (my last two and my current three) all love to shred cardboard tubes. We save our loo roll and kitchen roll tubes just for our mad dogs, and they love it.

10) Dishwasher
Dogs will happily lick up any leftover food stuck to your plate after lunch and dinner. It might be wise to run the dishes through the dishwasher afterwards, though.

11) Face cleaners
One of my dogs' favourite games is 'lick your owner to death'. Whenever we come home from whatever it was we were doing, the dogs all say hello by leaping onto us and licking our faces off, tails wagging like mad. And sometimes, Daisy makes adorable noises at the same time! This keeps our faces clean, at least according to our dogs!

12) Laundry
This may sound like another purely humorous one, but it's not. There are many, many helping dogs for the disabled in some way, and one of those dogs can really help someone who can't do their own laundry for whatever reason. These dogs will help out by putting the dirty laundry into the washing machine for their owner, then taking the clean stuff out again when the cycle's done. And this isn't a joke, not everyone can actually manage that and these dogs help them immensely.

13) Comforting the old or sick
While this sounds similar to the cheering up above, it's more a proffessional version. There are such dogs as 'pat dogs' that literally go around and be petted by the elderly and sick dog lovers who can no longer have a dog themselves. A wagging tail, adoring eyes, a cold wet nose, a gentle lick, these can all help the old or sick simply by bringing in a little happiness and light to their lives. And all the dog has to do is...be a dog. Be fussed, mostly. The dogs don't earn anything, and their owners have to pay insurance first, but it's a generally good thing for any old or sick person who gets to see a pat dog and say hello. D'awwww.

14) Finding illness
Dogs have phenomenal senses of smell, and thi9s can be put to use on spotting illnesses or helping those with illnesses. Dogs are being used to sniff out cancers in patients who might have it (the lab report *shot*), which helps doctors catch and treat it early, allowing the patient to live longer. But these illness detecting dogs are useful in the homes of patients for other reasons, too. A dog can often smell an incoming seizure in someone with epilepsy, before the person has it or even gets the warning themselves. This can be very useful for epileptics and can make their lives easier. A dog doesn't even need to be trained for this, either. The aforementioned clowning spaniel I used to have was more Mum's dog than mine (according to the spaniel) and could tell when Mum, who's diabetic, was about to have one of her really bad hypos. Those hypos were really bad back then (PM me if you want to hear about my experience with dealing with Mum during one), but the spaniel could somehow tell when Mum was going to have a bad hypo--and the spaniel had recieved only the basic dog training of '[name]!', 'No!', 'Sit', 'Stay', 'Leave', and 'Take it!' (at doggy mealtimes). Quite impressive for the old girl.

15) Herding
Wild dogs naturally hunt in packs, and part of this involves herding prey to other dogs to be taken down. It's no surprise, then, that humans have taken advantage of this and used dogs in farming livestock. The most well known of these is sheepdogs, border collies used to help herd the sheep into pens, fields, whatever for whatever reason, although there are other herding breeds. Corgis were bred to help herd cattle. These sorts of herding dogs will often herd other things if they're not on a farm herding other animals, like a corgi that herds cats into one of it's owners bedrooms, a collie that herds chickens or children. They were bred to herd and herd they shall!

16) Protecting livestock
Despite the name, German Shepherds didn't herd sheep as much as collies do. This breed, also called Alsatians, were more meant for helping shepherds protect the herd from wolves which would kill off the sheep. Heard of the boy who cried wolf? He could've done with not just a less mischevious nature, but an Alsation would've helped him deal with real wolves, since chances are, a real wolf would've picked off a few sheep before the villagers could come running. Woulda staved off the boredom and reduced the mischeviousness a bit, too. And speaking of Alsations...

17) Catch that criminal!
This was bound to turn up sooner or later. But it's true, Alsatians are the most common breed of police K-9 unit attack dogs. They're trained to run full pelt at a fleeing criminal, grab the perp's arm, and drag them down until the dog's handler and another pair of coppers can handcuff the crook and cart him off. And the dogs love it. On every cop show featuring K-9 attack dogs, you can clearly see the dogs with waggy tails and expressions of joy saying either 'Ooh, ohh, can I bite a criminal now, can I, can I, can I?' or 'Yay! I bit a criminal, and you love me! Yay! Good game, good game, can we do that again?' Adorable in their own barky, bitey way. Schnauzers can also be used for this purpose, provided they're not like American dog 'La Dur', who was retired in 1978 for being a terrible police dog. According to his handler, 'He just won't go up and bite them.' A truly terrible police dog. But not the worst.

[Strix Varia]

Deity for the dyslexic

Don't the dyslexic worship Dog?
My cousin told me that one. He is dyslexic with a sense of humor.

[KaceyCat]

Plushie De-Stuffer

You know what I'm talking about. They are incredibly efficient at de-fluffing any and all stuffed toys. Don't believe me? You need to come visit my house and observe my corgi then. You can tell when there's been a stuffed animal massacre, because there's blobs of fluff all over the living room floor.

[KathiraNarae]

I am definately putting those into the finished list. They are kinda funny, but this list does juxtapose mostly funny things like those and cardboard tube disposal with the serious working dog jobs like helping coppers.

[Mock]

[KaceyCat]

Oh yes, and my dog...When she gets her paws on a stuffed animal? She always goes for the face first. ALWAYS. It's like she doesn't want it watching her as she rips its innards out, or something. XD Seriously, you give her a stuffed animal and without fail, the eyes are the first to go. That's what happened to my poor, blinded pterodactyl before I rescued him...

Mock, is that a Hank Green/Vlogbrothers reference? Or simply a joke you happened to know?

[KathiraNarae]

See, Kacey, that's exactly why my terrier is never allowed near a cuddly toy of any sort. She tears them apart too. All three of my dogs also have a strange quirk that shall be addressed in the next update of the list. :P

[KathiraNarae]

Sorry for the double post, but the list has been updated.

[Mock]

[KaceyCat]

Darn, thought maybe I'd found a fellow Nerdfighter. Ah well.

Herding

My 19-month-old corgi's never seen a cow or a sheep or any other livestock. But she herds our 3 cats. It's in her nature, since the breed was created to herd cattle. Even as a puppy, she'd successfully herd all three cats into my room and up onto my bed. But besides that, there's dogs that are used for actual herding.

[KathiraNarae]

I think I read somewhere about a Border Collie that herded children. Those things herd, it's unavoidable. But I was going to put in herding, yes.

[KathiraNarae]

Another double post, another update.

[Mock]

Heh, K-9 unit attack dogs.