When creating fictional dog characters, there is a tendency for many creators to make them purebred, even when it would be unusual for them to be so in Real Life. After all, many dog breeds are instantly recognizable and visually distinct, and many have useful stereotypes associated with them aside — an English Sheepdog is probably a Big Friendly Dog, a toy poodle is likely a Mister Muffykins, a Doberman looks like a good Angry Guard Dog, and so on.
Illustrated and animated media, however, have more visual freedom than live-action media. Cartoons don't need, say, three identical-looking dogs to play one role, so they have the freedom to be more "muttlike" — it's easier to find three identical Golden Retrievers than three identical Golden Retriever/Pug mixed-breed dogs, after all. They can even have more fanciful traits (such as unusual fur colors) in accordance with whatever the creator imagines. Not to mention, character creators also may not want to tie a dog character down to a specific breed — as mentioned, many breeds do have stereotypes associated with them, and avoiding those stereotypes can give a dog character more of an "everydog" feel.
The end result is very often a Cartoon Dog Breed — a dog who neither strongly resembles a real-world breed (and may in fact have traits that are impossible in real life), nor has a specific real-world breed given for them. Rather than representing a specific breed of dog, they represent more an idealized version of "doggishness" that can be a sort of Audience Surrogate for the viewer's own best friend — a kind of doggy Everyman. They are most often seen when The Hero has, or is, a dog, and there are no or very few other dogs around to contrast them. Works focused on dogs tend more toward All Dogs Are Purebred, both because different dog breeds have different stereotypes and because the diversity of dog breeds out there is useful for adding visual interest. However, on some occasions, the "lead" dog will be this kind of mutt in order to help them stand out from their supporting cast of distinct breeds.
While Cartoon Dog Breeds can be as diverse as real-life dog breeds, they do tend to have certain traits:
- Are usually medium, working-dog-sized — somewhere between a beagle and a border collie. Dogs at either size extreme tend to have certain preconceptions around them, so this is the most "neutral" size.
- While CDBs can have any fur color, yellowish-brown fur, sometimes rendered as a bright orange, is most common. White (usually with black spots or ears) is almost as common, dark brown is less common, and gray and black are least common. Unrealistic colors are also semi-frequent, both on their own and paired with more realistic colors. It's usually with a short-to-medium length.
- Ears, and potentially a tail, of a darker color than their body, very often with one single large spot on their back. Yellow-orange fur and dark brown spots/ears is an extremely common color combination. It somewhat resembles what is known as a "fawn" coat in real-life dogs, but lacks the dark muzzle that is hallmark of fawn dogs in Real Life.
- CDBs can have any type of ear or ear length (pricked, short and floppy, or long and hanging), but a common feature of such cartoon mutts is "noodle ears" — having their ears drawn as skinny cylindrical tubes instead of the flat triangles or squares that dog's ears actually are. Drawing ears like this makes it much more easy to animate them expressively, and if your dog character isn't a real breed, nobody can get on you for making their ears look wrong.
- Straight, skinny tails, whether they're short or long. Curly tails in Western-designed CDBs are extremely rare.
The most common result tends to be a dog that looks halfway between a yellow Labrador or Golden Retriever and a beagle or Jack Russell terrier — not a mixed breed, mind you, but a dog that looks like both at once.
However, other dogs may apply. If you can ask yourself, "Can I tell what breed this cartoon dog is supposed to be just by looking at them?," and "Has the creator of the show given a canon, real-world breed, or breed mix, to this dog character?," and the answer to both is "no," then it's this trope. Mixed-breeds of known species don't count — so, for example, a dog who's known to be half German Shephard isn't this — but if the dog is simply said to be a mutt and their lineage isn't known, they can be a CDB. Similarly, if the dog's breed is given a fictional name, such as "Eggerbert's Froghound," they still count.
Incidentally, there is some Truth in Television to these traits. In areas with high stray dog populations that are able to reproduce without deliberate human guidance, the stray population tends towards light brown or blonde fur (sometimes with a few spots), medium size, short-to-medium-length fur, and skinny tails. The Other Wiki has a page on street dogs
for the curious.
Contrast the aforementioned All Dogs Are Purebred. Compare Informed Species, for cartoon dogs who do have a specified breed, but don't particularly look like them, which may overlap in some rare instances of this trope. See also Cartoon Penguin and Cartoon Whale, for other animals whose cartoon appearances don't match their real-world ones.
Examples:
- Reksio is a dog looking like a Jack Russell Terrier or Wire Fox Terrier with brown spot on left side on his eye and on his back and noodle ears.
- Digimon Frontier: Dogmon looks like an orange dog straight from a cartoon but doesn't look like he's from a distinct breed.
- Wowser: Dommel is a dog of an unknown breed, but looks like a polar bear with his fat belly and visible navel.
- Asterix: Dogmatix is a fluffy white street mutt with skinny "noodle ears" tipped in black. His long fur and pronounced mustache give him a slightly terrier-like look, but the mustache probably has more to do with giving him a resemblance to other Gauls than his potential breed, as he's a former stray and likely mixed.
- Snoopy of Peanuts is a special case, as he's one of the founding members of this particular style of cartoon dog design. Despite calling Snoopy a "beagle" in-universe, Charles M. Schulz freely admitted that Snoopy wasn't really a beagle and was moreso based on the unknown mixed-breed dog he owned as a child. Snoopy's core traits — a white dog with black ears and a single big black spot on his back — have been extremely influential on the appearance of many cartoon dogs since, and has likely led to the popularity of the "white-and-black" cartoon dog variant.
- Odie of Garfield is a classic yellow-with-brown-spots-and-ears variant. He's dumb, slurpy, and also unflinchingly loyal, as all good dogs should be — and even Garfield himself is kind to him sometimes. In one strip, Jon and his father discuss Odie's breed. Jon doesn't know and his father suggests "Useless."
- Despicable Me: Gru's dog Kyle is a small, vicious creature with black spiky fur, pointy ears that end in tufts of hair, and a large mouth with More Teeth than the Osmond Family. Gru admits that he doesn't know what breed he is; in fact, he doesn't sound sure he's a dog at all.
- Clifford the Big Red Dog: Clifford is, as the title states, a big red dog, but it's not really clear what breed of dog he is.
- Franny K. Stein: Igor is a brown mutt with a brown heart-shaped nose, floppy ears and a rat-like tail.
- Spot the Dog, of both several dozen board books and a cartoon, is a yellow, floppy-eared puppy with a single brown spot on his side and a brown spot on his tail. His parents have been drawn differently depending on the work, making him likely mixed-breed, but mixed from what changes between books. According to the author Eric Hill, he was subconsciously copying airplane paint schemes when he invented Spot but decided it worked.
- Adiboo: Magical Playland: Adiboo's dog Pup is a "suction cup dog" with yellow fur, cropped ears, a suction cup where his back legs should be, and arms where his front legs should be.
- Chicory: A Colorful Tale: The player character (whose default name is Pizza) is a dog of ambiguous breed. They seem to resemble a golden retriever more than anything else, but their sister Clementine has elements of a poodle to them with her hair styled in a particular way, and their mother has long ears like a Cocker Spaniel or an Afghan. Further muddling things is the fact that Pizza's father is a raccoon.
- In Dragon Quest Builders 2, in the Furrowfield chapter, a dog joins your town. She's a tan dog with a longish face, dark brown ears that are both erect and floppy, and a dark brown tail that is slightly curly and extremely fluffy. Her breed is given as the fictional "Furrowfield retriever."
- In Jet Force Gemini, Lupus is a small yellow dog who looks and sounds like a puppy, yet serves on a team of crack space adventurers. He also has noodle ears in 3D, which, if you believe his X-ray, even have bones in them! He's said to be a "space dog," which might explain the discrepancies between him and a normal Earth dog.
- In My Time at Portia, Scraps is a smallish stray dog with orange fur, a short tail, tall, upright ears, and a white spot on his forehead. He somewhat resembles a small Shiba Inu or corgi, but being a wandering stray, he has no definitive breed.
- Putt-Putt: Putt Putt's dog Pal is a small dog with a light brown body and dark brown cropped ears.
- Housepets!: Only a few select dog characters have named breeds, such as Tarot being a Pomeranian and Duchess being a Saluki. The vast majority of the rest are only hand-waved away as 'Mutts', and a few come with fanciful fur patterns, although none veer into Amazing Technicolor Wildlife like the cat Grape does.
- In Arthur, Pal is a yellow-coated, long-eared, medium-furred dog of an explicitly unknown breed. He's even barred from entering a pet show due to his uncertain lineage. Though he looks sort of Golden Retriver-y, he remains small his entire life, though this may have more to do with the show remaining mostly fixed in time than his breed.
- Blue's Clues: Most dogs on the show are never given a specific breed, and don't strongly resemble any real-life breed of dog, either. Blue herself is a blue puppy with long, floppy ears, as well as several darker blue spots. Magenta has many of Blue's traits, but is magenta instead of blue. Downplayed for Green Puppy; she also resembles Blue and Magenta, but has shorter ears and a visible underbite, implying she could be a bulldog.
- CatDog: Dog is an orange dog with brown spots, and it's never said what breed of dog he is.
- Courage the Cowardly Dog is a smallish, noodle-eared dog with pink fur and brown spots. A few old promotional materials refer to him as a "beagle," but his in-show backstory is that he's an abandoned puppy who was found and then adopted by his owner, Muriel.
- In Dogstar, the main dog, Hobart, is a medium-sized, chunky dog with short noodle ears, a blonde coat, slightly darker blonde spots, and a mask-spot over one eye. All the background dogs in the show generally resemble specific breeds, making Hobart very distinct in comparison.
- In Doug, Doug's dog Porkchop is a small gray dog, with a lighter gray belly, with short ears and a tail.
- Go, Dog. Go!: With the exception of a few, like Lady Lydia the poodle and Sam Whippet the whippet, most of the dogs don't resemble any specific breed. The Barkers in particular just look like multicolored dogs of various shapes and sizes (besides Grandpaw Mort, who resembles a basset hound).
- Inspector Gadget: Brain, Inspector Gadget's pet dog, is an orange dog of unknown breed.
- In Looney Tunes, Charlie Dog is a brown mutt with ears halfway between "realistic" and "noodle-eared," who is constantly hunting for a home. He claims to be a hybrid of all the best traits of various dog breeds, usually with absurd percentages, in order to sell himself to prospective adopters.
- In Martha Speaks, Martha herself is a medium-sized yellow dog with brown ears and a very small handful of brown spots, in addition to white socks on her paws. Her adoptive brother Skits somewhat resembles an Irish Setter, but isn't specified to be one.
- The Mighty B!: Happy is a blue dog with a purple nose, a black spot, and black, cropped ears. Half of his right ear is missing.
- Milo Murphy's Law: The Murphys' pet dog, Diogee, is a relatively small dog with light yellow fur and brown spots on his back. He also has floppy ears, a large nose, and short legs, giving him a more cartoonish appearance than most other dogs depicted in the series. Diogee's exact breed is never mentioned, but in the episode "The Llama Incident", Milo mentions that Diogee is one-quarter "llama dog" (a fictional breed of herding dog that specifically herds llamas).
- PAW Patrol: Rocky is said to be a mixed breed, but whatever breeds he's mixed with is unknown; he has gray fur, a black spot around his eye, an ear that's permanently bent, and white paws.
- Pluto the Pup is one of the oldest examples, if not the Trope Codifier. He's an orange dog with skinny black "noodle ears" and an equally skinny black tail, whose breed is mostly just "cartoon character."
- The Powerpuff Girls: Talking Dog is a white dog with black ears à la Snoopy, but it's never explained what breed he is.
- In Rugrats, Spike is a medium-sized orange dog with a handful of purple spots, including a big one on his back, and two very long "noodle ears" that are usually held erect. One episode of the original series, "Spike Runs Away", identified him as a "Siberian Tigerhound."
- Teacher's Pet: Spot is a blue dog with a lighter blue muzzle, darker blue ears, and a black spot on his back. "A Breed Apart" is about him wondering what breed he is, but he never finds out the true answer.
- Dudley in T.U.F.F. Puppy is explicitly a mix of "every dog breed ever," which mostly makes him look like a generic white cartoon dog with short black noodle ears and a short tail.
- Watch My Chops: Corneil is a small yellow dog with an indistinguishable breed. He has a reddish brown tail and pair of brown, cropped ears. He also has a large, blue, round nose.
