Canine Confusion

As it turns out, a full-grown white shepherd is way too big to even be carried by a grown woman, let alone a child.

Dogs may be man's best friend, but that doesn't mean the average human knows much about dogs. Wild canines are even more obscure.

Common examples of this include misunderstanding dog body language, misunderstanding pack dynamics, and using the wrong terms for dogs. Other examples, however, such as whether dogs are omnivorous or carnivorous and dominance theory, should be approached with more caution due to differing viewpoints. "Dogs see with their noses" is a common misconception, which is often visualized as Visible Odor. While dogs do have a much better sense of smell than humans, they don't use it all the time, and research shows that they rely far more on visual and acoustic cues when finding their way. Sometimes, though, especially on a Funny Animal or dogface, the Artistic License is intentional.

Due to the Rule of Cool and the Rule of Scary, this is also common on werewolves, although this is justified, since werewolves are a mythical creature as opposed to a real wolf. They will commonly be depicted as having Absurdly Sharp Claws (even though a real wolf's claws are just as blunt as any other canine's), being able to roar (which no canine can do in reality), being much more aggressive than a real wolf, preying on humans (which wolves rarely do), behaving more like a dog than a wolf, having a passing resemblance to a wolf, or playing the tropes Wolves Always Howl at the Moon or Alpha and Beta Wolves straight.

A lot of misinformation about domestic dogs is because serious research into dogs is a relatively recent development. For decades, scientists passed over dogs because they viewed them as dumbed down by domestication compared to wild canids. It's only within the last forty years that scientists have begun researching how dogs work and, even then, the research is mainly on pet dogs (thus why research on feral dogs is hard to come by compared to feral cats or pigeons).

A Super-Trope to Dogs Are Dumb, Wolves Always Howl at the Moon, Alpha and Beta Wolves, Dogs Love Being Praised, Psycho Poodle, Bully Bulldog, Saint-Bernard Rescue, Dogs Love Fire Hydrants, and Those Wily Coyotes. A Sub-Trope of Artistic License – Biology and Somewhere, a Mammalogist Is Crying. Compare to Somewhere, an Equestrian Is Crying, All Animals Are Dogs, Artistic License – Animal Care, and Animals See in Monochrome. Many Dog Stereotypes are also inaccurate to how the breeds actually are.

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Examples:

Advertising

• In Do Not Abandon Your Pet, a dog sheds tears at the end of the video when he's scruffy and starving due to his owner ditching him on the side of the road. Dogs are incapable of shedding tears from sadness.
• An ad for Napa auto parts features a hunter crouched in the marsh with his gun and, instead of a regular hunting dog, he has a fluffy white poodle with a pink bow in its hair. The tag line is: "Having the wrong auto part makes even less sense." The issue is that poodles are hunting dogs (and are considered one of the best hunting breeds at that).

Anime & Manga

• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure has a few cases of dogs eating things that would be poisonous to them in real life:
  • In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood, Erina leaves Jonathan a basket of grapes to thank him for rescuing her from bullies; Jonathan then proceeds to share them with his Big Friendly Dog Danny. Grapes are extremely toxic to dogs and can cause kidney failure even in small quantities.
  • In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders, the Trademark Favorite Food of Iggy the Boston Terrier is coffee-flavored gum; prior to his Character Development, it's the one thing that lets the heroes keep him under control. Chewing gum contains xylitol, which is so dangerous to dogs that a single piece of gum can cause seizures and liver damage.
• One Piece: The Wolf transformation Devil Fruit is considered a version of the Dog-Dog Fruit, despite dogs being descended from wolves and not the other way around. Other more distantly-related canine species are also classified as versions of the Dog-Dog Fruit.
• Wolf's Rain: Hige, Toboe, and most of the wolves are more brown than any real wolf, and every wolf that has markings is over simplified—although realistic ones would be hard to animate. The only visually realistically wolves are the pure white Kiba and pure black Blue (who is a wolf-dog). The pure black Darcia would count too, if not for his eyes being different colors.
• Wowser: Wowser has a visible navel even though dogs' belly buttons aren't that noticeable in real life.

Asian Animation

• Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Wolffy has a visible belly button even though wolves in real life don't have such noticeable navels.

Comic Books

• The Blackblood Alliance: Most of the wolves have body proportions that look too thin for gray wolves, let alone dire wolves.
• Tintin: In "Tintin in Tibet", Snowy drinks some whiskey, mistaking it for water. A real dog would have been able to smell that it wasn't water.

Comic Strips

• Dilbert: Dogbert eats a chocolate cake in one early strip and is fine even though chocolate is deadly to dogs. It's enforced, since Dogbert is a Funny Animal.
• Garfield: Odie is yellow with brown ears and a black spot. No breed of dog has such a color combination. The closest thing in Real Life is beagles, which are a combination of black, brown, and white.
• Peanuts:
  • Charlie Brown often gives his dog Snoopy human food such as chocolate, cookies, and pizza. In reality, Snoopy would be dreadfully ill or dead from eating all that.
  • Downplayed in an arc when Snoopy eats too many chocolate chip cookies and ends up with indigestion for his trouble. In real life, that would have been the least of his worries, as he realistically could have died from it.
  • Snoopy and the rest of his family members are beagles, but they have white fur with black ears, traits that Dalmatians have, not beagles.
  • Zigzagged; Snoopy is occasionally seen spinning his ears like propellers to fly even though no dog can do this in real life, but in one strip, his ears become tangled from the spinning and he crashes.
  • Snoopy is often seen blushing, even though dogs cannot visibly blush through their fur. Even Charlie Brown points out how strange it is at one point:
    Charlie Brown: How can anyone blush through a face full of hair?
  • This is pretty much lampshades in a PC Edutainment game:
    Charlie Brown: Sometimes, I’m not sure if Snoopy really is a dog.

Fan Works

• Humble Beginnings is a RWBY oneshot about the corgi Zwei, but it's off when it comes to dog development. Zwei can remember things from when he was a day old, opens his eyes within a week of birth, and is weaned in under a month without even his mother around to wean him.
• I Am Not the Big Bad Wolf establishes that the wolf in The Rugrats Movie only tried to eat the babies because he didn't know they were human, to try to make him seem more sympathetic. However, wolves don't have any reservations against eating humans, they just generally don't eat us because we put off too much of a fight.
• Junior Officers: In "Ladies Night", Dashi the Dachshund drinks a lot of beer and only ends up getting hammered with no long-lasting ill effects. In real life, even a little bit of beer can make a dog incredibly ill. Granted, Dashi is anthropomorphic.

Films — Animation

• All Dogs Go to Heaven: Killer's entire body goes green after Carface breathes cigar smoke right in his face even though dogs can't become visibly green when they're sickly due to their fur covering up their skin.
• All Dogs Go to Heaven 2: Starting from this movie, Annabelle the Whippet has no visible ears, for unknown reasons.
• The Bad Guys (2022): After saving an elderly lady from tumbling down a staircase, Mister Wolf gets praised as "a good boy." This causes him to wag his tail unconsciously. Wolves do not wag their tails out of happiness; they wag them to show they're subordinate to another wolf.
• Balto:
  • Balto's Adaptational Species Change results in him being an unusually tame stray, bordering on feral, wolf-dog. The narrative treats it as Half-Breed Discrimination that all the humans are scared of Balto, however real wolf-dogs are notoriously risky (nevermind ones not reared by humans). The real Balto was a pet husky (or a malamute, depending on the source).
  • Jenna is a red husky. While this is a color allowed by the Breed Standard, red huskies are more brownish than Jenna's dark red.
  • Steele is a Alaskan malamute with Icy Blue Eyes. However, purebred malamutes cannot have blue eyes. Malamutes only have brown eyes.
  • In Balto II: Wolf Quest, one of Balto and Jenna's puppies is ostracized by humans because she looks and acts more like a wolf than her wolf-dog father. Being more dog than wolf, Aleu should be less like a wolf than her father. Aleu also doesn't look like a gray wolf— she has light brown fur and blue eyes, which are dog traits. Aleu looks like a husky mix, not a wolf.
  • At the end of the second film, Aleu is allowed to lead a wolf pack (or "clan" as wolves call it), despite both being unrelated to anyone else and not even being fully grown.
• In Bolt, the title character is an unusually small white shepherd. White shepherds are an off-shoot of the German shepherd and are a large breed. As a five-year old adult, he's barely larger than a house cat, less than half as big as he should be. He's puppy-sized, not adult-sized. Another white Shepherd is shown and it's the same size, so it isn't just Bolt being unusually small.
• Clifford the Big Red Dog: Enforced for Clifford, who's deliberately written as being unrealistically large (said to be the result of Emily Elizabeth's love for him) and red, while no real-life dogs are red.
• Doggy Poo: Towards the end, the titular living dog turd is used as fertilizer for a dandelion so she can bloom, but in real life, dog feces cannot be used as fertilizer because dogs are carnivorous.
• Foodfight!: Dex Dogtective loves to eat raisins and chocolate, both of which are toxic to dogs (especially the former). Though it could be justified since he's an "ike" (a food mascot) and he's anthropomorphic.
• Lady and the Tramp:
  • Lady's owners give her coffee and donuts, which she eats with no ill effects. Coffee is toxic to dogs and donuts are not as harmful, but they still shouldn't be eaten by dogs.
  • Lady wears a muzzle for longer than a half hour, which is dangerous to dogs because they could suffocate eventually.
• Mulan: Little Brother the dog has rabbit-like ears.
• Oliver & Company: When Fagin's dogs go to Jenny's house to look for Oliver, Einstein eats a piece of chocolate that was supposed to be given to Georgette the poodle. Chocolate kills dogs in real life.
• Open Season: In Scared Silly, Serge and Deni lay eggs when they're startled, and so does Mr. Weenie the Dachshund even though dogs do not lay eggs. Even Weenie himself appears to be surprised.
• Peter and the Wolf: At one point in the 2006 animated adaption, the wolf slashes Peter across the face with its claws. While this is not technically impossible, it is still odd for a wolf. Wolf claws are dull because they are used for traction while running and cannot be retracted. Swatting with a paw is a very cat-like action, and not something canines tend to do because they rely mainly on their jaws for fighting. Also, wolves and other canines would have difficulty slashing like that because their shoulders don't easily allow for that kind of motion.
• Pocahontas: At one point, Percy enjoys cherries while he's taking a bath. In real life, dogs should not eat cherries because their pits, leaves and stems have cyanide in them, which is poisonous and dangerous. Cherry pits can also get stuck in a dog's intestinal tract.
• The Rugrats Movie has a wolf that has dew claws on its back feet, which is a trait only found in some dogs; wolves never have dew claws on their back feet. It also sounds like a big cat.
• Titanic: The Legend Goes On: One of the dogs sheds a single tear after seeing the Titanic sink. Though keep in mind, this is the same movie where a different dog suddenly becomes bipedal, starts rapping, and wears hip-hop clothes out of nowhere even though it's supposed to be 1912.

Films — Live-Action

• A Dog's Purpose: Maya gives Tino the corgi a lot of human food, including ice cream and pizza. The only bad thing that happens to him is that he gains weight from it even though he should've been sick or dead from all that. The corgi is a breed that can get easily overweight, which in turn leads to severe back problems, yet Tino passes on to old age.
• Scooby-Doo (2002): Scrappy Doo is said to have a glandular disorder, but the only symptom he has from it is that he looks like a puppy when he isn't. In real life, dogs with glandular disorders express symptoms such as increased thirst, hair loss, and thin skin.
• Wolfen claims that wolves — not just its urban superwolves, but real ones — have thermographic vision.

Literature

• Bunnicula: Harold the dog has chocolate as his Trademark Favorite Food and he steals fudge in another book even though chocolate can kill dogs in real life.
• A Dog's Purpose: Zigzagged in A Dog's Journey; Clarity gives her dog Molly lots of ice cream bars, pizza, and cookies and Molly doesn't have any ill effects, but she does vomit after she eats moldy cheese (Clarity assumed dogs can eat almost anything).
• Franny K. Stein: At the end of "Attack of the 50-Ft. Cupid", Igor takes a bite of a giant chocolate-covered cherry. Cherry flesh on its own could upset a dog's stomach (and the pits contain cyanide), and chocolate is outright lethal to them.
  • "Frantastic Voyage" shows Igor eating grapes while watching television, leading to him accidentally eating Franny's doomsday device. Grapes are just as deadly to dogs.
• The Good Dog:
  • Used in-universe when Jack claims that malamutes are part-wolf. Despite their looks, malamutes aren't any more wolf than other dogs. They don't even have wolf in their recent lineage, like the German shepherd or saarloos wolfdog do. Also, technically speaking, all dogs are a sub-species of wolf.
  • The plot of the book revolves around wolf trying to get dogs to live with her in the wild. Dogs and wolves don't get together well, plus there's conflicting research on whether dogs even form concrete packs.
• Used in-universe in Men at Arms, when Big Fido urges dogs to rise up and tear out the throats of their human masters, preaching the superiority of wolves in the wild. Angua, who's actually met wolves, knows it's only a delusion. Big Fido, being a small wimpy dog with a bad case of flatulence and crazy eyes, is essentially Adolf Hitler as a Psycho Poodle. Dogs (or at least, runaway pet ones) are also apparently capable of being cowed by a human voice (like Gaspode's), especially someone telling them they've been a Bad Dog.
• The Poky Little Puppy: The puppies are ready to eat rice pudding, chocolate custard, and strawberry shortcake, but none of those are healthy to dogs (especially the chocolate custard). After Poky's siblings go to bed without their dessert, Poky eats all of it himself and doesn't suffer from any negative effects.
• In Some Dogs Do, some dogs can fly. Needless to say, this can't actually happen.
• Holo of Spice and Wolf is a wolf goddess who has completely light brown hair (in both wolf and humanoid form), as do the non-magical wolves she associates with.
• Survivors:
  • Realistically, a lot of the dogs should have a tougher time surviving in the wild than depicted. Sweet, for example, is a greyhound. Due to their low body fat, they're known for getting injured and getting cold very easily. Sweet still fares perfectly well in cold forest environments and is powerful enough to quickly become a Beta and then later become an Alpha. Alfie is also pretty athletic for a British bulldog. He's never shown any difficulty keeping up with the other dogs. Bulldogs in general are known for only being able to run in spurts due to breathing issues.
  • Dogs are depicted as monogamous, unlike real dogs. This is accurate for the wolf characters, however dogs aren't monogamous like gray wolves are.
  • Dogs follow the outdated pack hierarchy system. Alphas are the leaders, betas are the second-in-command, omegas are the lowest of the caste, everything is decided with fighting, etc. This system is considered inaccurate to how wolf packs actually work. It's fine for the protagonists as they're unrelated dogs, but Alpha implies all packs should be like this.
  • The dogs do not like scavenging on waste left by longpaws, finding it demeaning and unsuitable for wild dogs. However, real feral and especially stray dogs do scavenge a lot (frequently more than they hunt). Real stray dogs are also awfully clumsy hunters compared to wolves (though true ferals are better hunters), but the dogs in Survivors are much more effective.
  • The characters form packs like wolves. Studies have indicated that domestic dogs don't do this. They scavenge (or hunt) smaller prey either individually or in parallel from one another.
  • Sweet has a lengthy screaming birth. Dog births are usually much easier and less painful than human births.
  • The Fierce Dogs are vicious but dimwitted dogs. In real life, dobermans are a notoriously intelligent breed. They're, in fact, considered one of the smartest dog breeds. The Fierce Dogs are also naturally blood-thirsty, with even the White Sheep Storm being unusually violent for a pup. Dobermans (especially American ones) aren't nearly as aggressive as the Angry Guard Dog trope makes them seem.
  • Alfie is a "small" dog that is so fragile he's killed with one hit of Alpha's (a German shepherd/wolf hybrid) paw. Alfie is a bulldog, which are on average 18-23 kg (40-50 lb).
  • Foxes are described as living in "packs" and having "cubs". A group of foxes is actually a "skulk" or "leash" while the most common term for a young fox is a "kit". This could all be choked up to dogs using their terminology on foxes, except that there's a fox kit named "Cub Fire".
• Swallows and Amazons: William the pug likes chocolate, which can kill dogs in real life.
• The wolf-dog protagonist of The Wolves of Paris is described as hairless when he's born. Canines are born fully furred.
• In Zoe And Beans, Zoe gives Beans the dog chocolate biscuits. In reality, that would have made him sick and could have even killed him.

Live-Action TV

• The Animal Planet show Breed All About It teaches about different breeds of dogs. Despite this, not all their facts are correct. For example, they mentioned that English bulldogs were bred so wrinkly to help keep blood out of their eyes during bull-fighting. This is incorrect, as bulldogs in the 1800s were less wrinkly and had longer muzzles.
• Sesame Street:
  • Played for Laughs in one episode where Maria imagines being the only human in a world populated by dogs, and the dogs all look like Barkley.
  • One animated skit shows a dog crying when it loses its bone, even though dogs are incapable of shedding tears out of emotion in real life.

Video Games

• Adiboo: Magical Playland: You can make Pup sick by putting certain ingredients in the cake, but chocolate isn't an ingredient that makes him sick.
• Animal Crossing: Several dog and wolf villagers have unusual colors. Some are pink, green, or blue, just to name a few colors. They are anthropomorphic, though.
• Fire Emblem Fates: Keaton is a Wolfskin (a humanoid creature with wolf-like features) and his tail tends to wag when he's happy. In real life, wolves' tails don't wag unless they're expressing subordination, though Keaton's case could be justified since he has a mostly human body.
• Living Books: In one of the adaptations of one of the Arthur books, Pal is portrayed as loving chocolate, even though in real life, chocolate makes dogs sick and could even kill them.
• Nintendogs:
  • Nintendogs + Cats each breed comes in multiple colours, however in real life many of the breeds have very few, if any, varying patterns according to Breed Standards. This means several dogs have fake fur colours, such as Maltese with spots.
  • You can feed the dogs and cats milk. This would result in diarrhea for actual weaned pets.
• In Potion Permit, your dog likes garlic, even if it's toxic to him in real life^note in excessively large amounts, since garlic in general being poisonous to dogs is a misconception.
• Sonic the Hedgehog: Tails is a fox with two tails (hence his nickname) that spin like propellers so that he can fly. Not only is it impossible for any animal, let alone a fox, to have more than one tail, but they certainly wouldn't be able to fly with those.
• Them's Fightin' Herds: An In-Universe example happens with Pom's original backstory. The sheep struggle to find food that their dogs eat since they keep ignoring things like hay, leaves, flowers, alfalfa, etc. and letting it go to waste; unaware that, as carnivores, the sheepdogs have to eat meat. Pom noticed that the dogs survived by hunting pests that were damaging their crops, and tried bring this up to her clan, but was too shy to say anything.
• The life sim Wolf (DOS) uses the outdated wolf hierarchy system. This was known to be outdated even at the time of release.
• Yoshi's Island: Poochy is said to be a dog, but he looks nothing like one; he has no visible ears or nose, and he has big yellow lips that resemble a bird's beak.

Web Animation

• Happy Tree Friends: Whistle is a blue dog.
• Wolf Song: The Movie strives on Rule of Cool rather than anything remotely accurate. For instance, real wolves don't hide in trees or have retractable claws.

Webcomics

• Awoo: Pink Wolf wags their tail when they're happy in one strip. In real life, wolves only wag their tails to show submission and not because they're happy.
• Off-White:
  • A conversation between Othala and Raigho suggests that a female wolf leading a pack is unusual. In reality, wolf packs are a nuclear family structure, and having the eldest female parent lead a pack is not at all unusual.
  • The pack is shown hunting a bull elk. This is possible, but unlikely, because wolves, like most predators, usually target the sick, the young, the weak and anything else less hard to catch than a healthy adult animal.
  • Iki, a wolf, has blue eyes. Young wolves have blue eyes, but they change color as they get older. This is intentional, it indicates the color of her spirit.

Western Animation

• 101 Dalmatian Street:
  • Dante is a black dalmatian with white and purple spots.
  • Dorothy, who is for all intents and purposes a baby, is so young that she doesn't have any spots yet, but she is perfectly capable of walking, and her eyes are firmly open. However, a Dalmatian's spots start to come through just before they open their eyes at around two weeks old. In reality, Dorothy would either have a small amount of spots, or still be unable to walk, see, or be separated from her mother.
• Adventure Time: Zigzagged with Jake; in "Slumber Party Panic", he says he can't eat chocolate or fudge due to being a dog, but in "The Pods", he eats chocolate ice cream without getting ill. In other episodes, he is seen drinking coffee. Though he has been shown using his stretching powers to increase the size of his liver to filter out poison more efficiently, so he could theoretically do the same to handle chocolate and caffeine.
• All Dogs Go to Heaven: In the TV show, Belladonna has no visible ears, though this could be justified by the fact that she's a demon.
• Arthur: Zigzagged with Pal, the non-anthropomorphic dog. In "Sick as a Dog", he becomes ill enough to warrant an overnight stay at the vet's office due to Arthur sharing some human(oid) food with him, but in "Tales from the Crib", he eats chocolate ice cream and doesn't get sick.
• Bluey:
  • There are a few dogs with oddly-colored fur; all the Blue Heelers have blue fur (although Rad has red and blue fur), Jean-Luc is a Labrador with indigo fur, and Coco and her family are pink poodles.
  • The dogs frequently eat human food such as ice cream, cake, and chocolate even though all of that would be unhealthy to real dogs. It's justified since this is a World of Funny Animals.
  • In "Fancy Restaurant", Bandit turns green after he eats some of Bingo's awful food even though dogs can't go green through their fur when they're nauseous.
  • Judo has a red tongue like the other dogs instead of a bluish-black one like a real Chow Chow.
• The Casagrandes:
  • In "Lalo Land", a flashback shows a younger Lalo wailing Ocular Gushers due to losing a toy, and in the present day, he has flooded the apartment with his tears. Dogs can't cry emotionally in real life.
  • In "Dial 'M' for Mustard", Vito and his dogs cry after Bruno's hot dog cart is stolen. Dogs never cry from emotions in the real world.
• Doug: Doug's dog Porkchop is often seen eating human food like pizza and ice cream with no ill effects even though he should be ill from it.
• Courage the Cowardly Dog:
  • Courage is supposed to be a beagle, but his pink fur with tiny spots and the shape of his ears don't make him look like one.
  • In "Mother's Day", Courage eats a nearly full box of chocolates, but the only side effect is having a stomach pain. In real life it would kill him faster than any of the monsters he faces.
  • In "Campsite of Terror", Courage eats a chocolate cupcake without side effects.
• DuckTales (1987): The Beagle Boys and Ma Beagle look nothing like actual beagles; they have peach-colored fur that fair-skinned humans may have and their ears are very small. Real beagles have brown, white, and black fur and longer ears.
• The Family Guy episode "Screwed the Pooch" had a moment of Brian the dog getting fat from overeating chocolate, even though that much should kill him. However, a few things to keep in mind is that this is a fantasy sequence (Peter's at that) and Rule of Funny is in effect. Brian also makes it clear in later episodes that chocolate is poisonous to dogs, even projectile vomiting when he eats a few handful for real in "Valentine's Day in Quahog".
• Feast: Winston the Boston Terrier eats massive amounts of human food, but he never gets sick at any point.
• Guess How Much I Love You: Little Redwood Fox is shown to be friends with Little Nutbrown Hare even though foxes eat hares in real life.
• The 1980s cartoon Jem features a pet fox in one episode. The fox makes dog noises as well.
• Johnny Test: Dukey has been shown to eat chocolate even though chocolate is lethal to dogs. It could be justified since Dukey is an Uplifted Animal, though.
• Kipper: Kipper and Tiger are both dogs. In the Beach Episode, Kipper offers to buy icecream for both of them, but while Tiger understandably refuses chocolate topping on his and just wants plain vanilla icecream, Kipper buys one with chocolate topping for himself and he's fine.
• Little Princess: Several examples involving Scruff the dog:
  • In "I Want My Tooth", when his teeth are being brushed, he is shown without fangs and with humanlike incisors and molars.
  • Chocolate makes dogs sick, but in "I Want My Dummy", "I Want a Surprise", "I Want to Cook", and "I Want a Midnight Feast", Scruff eats it and is fine.
  • In "I Don't Want to Leave Home", he and Puss kiss each other. Dogs, in real life, express affection by licking.
• Littlest Pet Shop (2012):
  • In "Topped with Buttercream", the pets, including Zoe the dog, eat a ton of candy and ice cream. Besides acting high and getting a stomachache, Zoe doesn't suffer from any lasting damage even though she would have been seriously ill or even dead in real life.
  • In "Bakers and Fakers", Blythe gives Zoe a slice of chocolate cake. Chocolate is toxic to dogs.
  • There are several dogs with unnatural colors; Zoe is a King Charles Cavalier Spaniel with purple fur, her sister Gail has pink fur, and Tootsie (Gail's Identical Stranger) has pink fur and purple hair at the top of his head, as well as purple ears.
  • In "Bad Hair Day", when Zoe gets an atrocious haircut, she is shown to have beige skin even though dogs actually have dark gray (or black) skin in real life.
• Madeline: Genevieve the dog occasionally sheds tears when she's sad even though dogs can't shed tears from emotion in real life.
• Martha Speaks:
  • In "Martha Says It with Flowers", Martha breaks down in tears after the flowers she got for Grandma Lucille are ruined even though dogs can't cry from sadness in real life.
  • Lampshaded; Martha got her ability to speak from eating alphabet soup and it somehow entering her brain. It's noted in-universe that real dogs can't learn to speak from eating alphabet soup.
  • In "Martha's Blue Period", Helen imagines Martha crying enough to flood the house. Dogs' eyes can tear up, but only from irritation, not emotion. Justified, as this is an Imagine Spot.
• The Octonauts: Dashi lives on a mostly vegan diet just like the other Octonauts despite being a dog. Justified, as this is a World of Funny Animals and the non-anthropomorphic animals are still shown to be sapient.
• PAW Patrol:
  • In a few episodes, Rubble the bulldog is shown swimming with no issue. In real life, bulldogs cannot swim without a life jacket because their legs are too short and their bodies are too robust.
  • Dwayne is a dog with buckteeth, and he's noticeably the only dog in the series with them. Dogs do not have buckteeth in real life, they have fangs (which every other dog in the series has).
  • In "Pups Take the Cake", the pups eat some chocolate cake. In real life, chocolate can kill dogs.
  • Zizagged with Tracker due to Flip-Flop of God; he has been called a chihuahua or a potcake dog depending on the source. Assuming he is a chihuahua, he is not the right size for one, as he's one of the tallest members of the PAW Patrol even though chihuahuas are extremely small in real life.
  • There are several dogs who look nothing like their supposed breed. Chase is a German Shepherd, but his coloring makes him look more like a mixed breed. Everest is a husky who resembles a malamute and she has lavender fur. Sweetie is a West Highland White Terrier who is much lankier and smaller than her actual breed^note Though this could be excused by the fact that she's a kid. Tuck and Ella are Golden Retrievers who resemble Labrador Retrievers. Sylvia from "Pups Save a Herd" is a Palette Swap of Chase with purple fur.
• Puppy in My Pocket: Adventures in Pocketville:
  • In "Evershell the Wise", Zull and Gort are seen eating grapes. In real life, grapes are toxic to dogs because of the amount of fluoride they can collect.
  • In part 2 of "Sweet Dreams", while Magic spends time with his friends at the Pet Resort, he runs on a treadmill and eventually starts sweating. In real life, dogs cannot sweat because they lack sweat glands unlike humans, which explains why they pant when exhausted instead.
• The Ren & Stimpy Show: Ren is often seen eating human food despite being a chihuahua (though he is anthropomorphic), and in "Pixie King", he lays lots of eggs. The latter is at least justified since it's in a fictional book that Ren is reading. Also, he is a dog with a rat-like tail.
• Rugrats:
  • In "Touchdown Tommy", Spike is seen licking up some of the spilled chocolate milk at several points and he doesn't get sick even though chocolate is dangerous towards dogs.
  • Spike is said to be a Siberian Tiger Hound, which does not exist in real life. He also has a cat-like tail.
• Scooby Doo from Scooby-Doo was designed to be the antithesis of the ideal Great Dane in both look and attitude. In addition, his tail is somewhat catlike.
• Super Why!: Wolfy has big rabbit-like ears (especially in the third season) even though wolves in real life have smaller, pointier ears.
• Tiny Toon Adventures: Arnold the Pit Bull has a tail that looks more like that of a cat.
• What a Nightmare, Charlie Brown!: Snoopy eats five pizzas and a milkshake. All that happens to him is that he has a nightmare, but in real life, he would've died or at least gotten extremely ill (especially since there was chocolate sprinkled in the milkshake).
• Episode 7 of W.I.T.C.H. has a scene with a fox hunting a rabbit. The fox makes noises that are probably stock dog noises.
• Zip And Mac: When Zip gets seasick, he becomes Green Around the Gills. In real life, dogs' fur colour doesn't change as a response to nausea.

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