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Pet-sonal Security

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Pet-sonal Security (trope)
The standards at the time prevent Mr. Doo from making this a Groin Attack.

Ever since man first domesticated the wolf and turned them into the beloved dogs we all know and love today, there have been stories of pets coming to the rescue of their owners when they were in trouble.

A Big Friendly Dog, a possessive cat that has a mean streak a mile wide for anyone who isn't their owner, and, when Played for Laughs, any number of a few outlandish pets will jump at the chance to defend their owner. It's essentially the domestic pet version of Beware the Nice Ones.

Unlike the Angry Guard Dog, which usually has training at keeping intruders away and is sequestered away from people when not patrolling the areas they're assigned to protect, these are regular domesticated pets who simply show a degree of loyalty and comradery to their people, sometimes being willing to make a Heroic Sacrifice for the person they love most in the world.

Also, a Heroic Dog is different as well, as this tends to be a dog whose very duty is to actively protect people, e.g. police dogs, a firefighter's dalmatian, a dog with the forestry service or search and rescue units. In short, they've had training in protecting people.

May cross over with Evil-Detecting Dog if the pet in question can also tell that a person/place/thing is bad news before anyone else.

The pet in question may be a Nearly Normal Animal.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 
  • Final Fantasy: Unlimited:
    • Chobi is a chocobo found by Yu Hayakawa. He protects Yu multiple times by beating down enemies with his legs.
    • Poshepocket is a small fury creature that becomes the familiar of Ai Hayakawa. He can produce items from his Hammerspace mouth to help Ai when she is in danger. Poshepocket even devours one of Herba's plant monsters whole when it tries to attack Ai.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1999): Volvagia is reimagined as a baby dragon that was found by Link. Even at his young age, Volvagia was able to use his fire breath to kill a Stalchild that tried to attack Link.
  • Mission: Yozakura Family: Subverted with Goliath, the Yozakura's dog. He's extremely fast, has sizeshifting capacities allowing him to become 8 meters tall, but he's nothing compared to the family itself.
  • Ranma ½: Akane has a small black pot-bellied piglet named P-chan ("P for Pig"), who will always risk life and limb to keep Akane safe from harm, including tangling with an oni, as well as saving her from nearly drowning on one occasion, or taking on The Eight-Headed Orochi. Subverted in that P-Chan is actually Ranma's romantic rival for Akane, Ryoga, in cursed porcine form.

    Fan Works 
  • The Bolt Chronicles: Downplayed. While their lives post the Bolt TV show are far more humdrum than before, Bolt, Mittens, and Rhino are still willing to do anything for Penny and her mother.
  • The Dragon and the Butterfly: Toothless is described as being "willing to go to Hell and back for his rider, and do it again for good measure." This extends to the Madrigal family once he and Hiccup become members; everyone from Alma to Antonio is under his protection.
  • The Price of Silk: When Team Snakemouth visit the Hive to pick up Chompy -- their plant-like pet -- after Kabbu has recovered enough to leave Defiant Root, Chompy becomes unusually clingy towards the beetle. When they return home and Kabbu all but collapses into his bed, she immediately takes up a vigil next to to him, completely ignoring her usual resting place and whines when he starts having a nightmare. She continues to give Kabbu extra attention for quite some time afterwards.

    Films — Animation 
  • Aladdin (Disney): Zigzagged with Princess Jasmine's pet tiger, Rajah. He is very devoted to her and is naturally just as protective of his owner. Even before Jasmine met Aladdin and the gang, Rajah was her only friend. Anyone foolish enough to threaten the Princess would often have to go through Rajah first. However, he is only seen protecting Jasmine whenever the princess is in the royal palace. Therefore, whenever Jasmine is out of the palace, Rajah isn't nearby to protect her.
  • All Dogs Go to Heaven: Charlie is this to Anne-Marie. He makes sure she's taken care of and does whatever he can to try and keep her safe/happy. At first, this is because he sees her as a meal ticket since she Speaks Fluent Animal (allowing them to win gambling money off of fixed animal races). However, he slowly but surely comes to truly love the girl, and in the end gives his life to save her.
  • Bolt plays with this a little. On TV, Bolt is a superpowered dog who helps his owner, Penny, fight an evil organization. In reality, Bolt is a "normal" dog that lives on a Hollywood set who, thanks to the efforts of the crew members, doesn't realize that his powers don't exist. That said, both on screen and off, Bolt is shown to be very protective of Penny, and even learning the truth isn't enough to deter him from saving her.
  • How to Train Your Dragon: Toothless and Hiccup share the strongest bond in the franchise, and there's nothing the dragon won't do to protect his best friend.
  • Oliver & Company:
    • Oliver, despite being a little kitten, will do whatever he can to protect Jenny. Even go up against savage Dobermans.
    • Dodger, Rita, Francis, Tito, and Einstein love Fagan. Even though he can't provide them with much (being a bum with no job who's in serious debt to Sykes), they'll do anything to protect him. Dodger even risks his life fighting the Dobermans for Fagan.
    • Jenny tries to invoke this trope by bringing Georgette with her to the docks, likely because she felt safer having a dog with her. Georgette, however, is a show dog who doesn't know how to fight or defend herself, let alone Jenny. Even though she does care for the girl, there's simply nothing she could do.
  • Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown: Snoopy saves Woodstock from a vicious cat, which is a huge step up for him, as he'd spent most of the film being utterly terrified of the cat, aptly named Brutus.
  • The Rugrats Movie: The babies get lost in a forest when they attempt to take Dil, Tommy's newborn brother, back to the hospital in the Reptar Wagon. Spike spends the movie tracking the babies, and near the end, he saves them from a hungry wolf that was trying to hunt them down.
  • Tangled: Pascal and Maximus both serve as Team Pets for Rapunzel, and both take her safety seriously:
    • Pascal has been Rapunzel's best friend for years, and was the main reason she didn't feel lonely in the tower. While he's smaller than most things that would harm Rapunzel, he's more than willing to fight for her.
    • Maximus is a palace horse, and thus trained to fight evil. As soon as he's befriended Rapunzel, there's nothing he won't do for her. Once Eugene's on the side of good, this extends to him, too.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1: In a tragic example that was added to the film but wasn't present in the books, Hedwig is released for her to fly off and avoid the Battle of Seven Potters, named because six other people took Polyjuice potion to transform into copies of Harry to confuse the Death Eaters. However, when Death Eaters close in on the real Harry, she comes back and attacks a Death Eater to interrupt his spell and then intercepts a Killing Curse. Unfortunately, this only confirms that this Harry was the real Harry and the Death Eater flies off to alert Voldemort.
  • Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood: When the Manson Family members come to Rick Dalton's house and threaten Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) with a gun, he clicks his tongue, signaling for his pitbull Brandy to attack, biting the arm and crotch of one of the hippies then attacking another. Fortunately, Brandy doesn't need to pull a Heroic Sacrifice as Cliff and Rick (Leonardo DiCaprio) are able to deal with the hippies in classic Quentin Tarantino style.
  • Secondhand Lions: Jasmine, the eponymous lion(ess) was a circus lion who has become domesticated by years of hanging around people, and who took an immediate liking to Walter. When Stan, the latest in a string of abusive lovers that Walter's mother has clung to, attempts to beat information about where the Brothers McCann kept their wealth, Jasmine nearly kills him. Hub and Garth McCann inform Stan that he was lucky that Jasmine got to him first.
  • Turner and Hooch: Hooch zigzags this. He was a junkyard dog who served as a companion for an old man, and witnesses his owner's murder, and is chomping at the bit to get at the guilty party. Over the course of the film, he bonds with Detective Turner and performs a Heroic Sacrifice when Turner discovers that the killer was actually working for Turner's boss, who was helping to cover up a local drug smuggling operation. However, Hooch did leave Someone to Remember Him By in the form of a rowdy puppy born to the Collie belonging to Turner's girlfriend.

    Literature 
  • Adventurers' Guild Craftsman:
    • Discussed. Taffy the dog whiles away the days as Team Pet at the Adventure Guild branch, showing little sign that he's the long-term Bond Creature of a veteran Beastmaster. However, a bodyguard restrains her boss from starting a fight while Taffy is in the room, saying he would have no chance of survival.
    • This is later shown to be Not Hyperbole when a rogue adventurer tries to attack the branch and is summarily killed by the Guildmaster's cat.
  • Arcia Chronicles: Lynxes are heraldic tokens of the Yambor royal dynasty, so when Roman evaluates which animal to magically bind to Prince Stefan as his protector, he decides on a large male lynx. The Played With aspect comes from the fact that Faithful, which is what Stefan names him, was a wild lynx before the ritual, but was effectively tamed and domesticated by Roman's magic.
  • The Famous Five: In many of the books, Timmy takes the role of Heroic Dog when protecting the children. In Five Go Off in a Caravan, this role is also taken by Pongo the chimpanzee, who often frightens away the villains Lou and Dan.
  • The Five Ancestors: Seh obtains a snake that he takes to keep on his arm. When attacked by an old man who has been selling food made out of human meat, the snake bites the man, allowing Seh to break his jaw.
  • Fudge: In the second book, Peter invokes this when Sheila won't stop teasing him while he's walking his dog, Turtle. Knowing that Sheila is afraid of dogs, he looks at Turtle and yells "Sic 'em!" Turtle doesn't know what that command means, but he starts barking. Sheila, believing he's about to start chasing her, screams and runs away.
  • Old Yeller: The titular dog protects the Coates family from the dangers of the Texas wilderness. Tragically, it costs him his life when he fends off an aggressive wolf: the family realizes the wolf was too aggressive and probably rabid, so Travis gives his doomed dog a quick death.
  • Where the Red Fern Grows: Billy's beloved coonhounds Old Dan and Little Ann charge a mountain lion in the Ozarks to protect him, giving him a chance to kill it with his wood axe. However, Old Dan dies of his injuries and Little Ann loses the will to live after, ending Billy's hunting career.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Dead Like Me: Played for Laughs when Roxy tells a skeptical Mason that she wants a pet bird. To his increasing skepticism and her increasing frustration, it turns into a Seinfeldian Conversation about a PBS special about a parrot that (allegedly) flew to its owner's defense against a robber.
    Roxy: It opened up its cage and went crazy. Pecked out the robber's eyes, scratched his face up like he was Tippi Hedren or some shit. And don't you tell me that's not friendship...
    Mason: Well, a parrot can't take on a full-grown man unless that man is a big pussy.
    Roxy: I didn't say the parrot won! The robber stabbed it with a fork and killed its owner. The bird's dead.
    Mason: So why are you getting a bird?
    Roxy: It's not about Homeland Security you stupid motherfucker, I'm gonna get a friend!
  • Lassie: The titular dog, Lassie, a Rough Collie, could always be counted on to protect her owner(s). Lassie has actually had a number of owners over the course of the show, which ran for seventeen years, but the most remembered is Timmy Martin, mostly due to the oft repeated meme of Timmy falling into a well, though, ironically, while Lassie has rescued Timmy from such things as falling into a lake or a gopher hole, he never did fall down a well.

    Video Games 
  • Ghost Trick: Missile, while only a small Pomeranian, is determined to protect his owner Kamila, to the point of breaking out of their apartment to go and track her down. This leads to Missile getting run over and killed and gaining the powers of the dead, with which he saves not only Kamila but multiple other characters over the course of the game. And then it's revealed that Sissel's mentor Ray is actually an older Missile from an alternate timeline where Sissel refused to get involved in the night's events, resulting in the deaths of Kamila and several others; Missile had travelled back in time and taken the form of Ray to trick Sissel into helping, all out of sheer determination to save his beloved mistress.
  • Sunless Sea: The Wretched Mog is a foul-tempered (and generally foul) cat whom your Captain can take on as ship Mascot. It's also scrappy enough to automatically win two particular combat encounters for you — in one, a brawl with pirates, you still lose one crewman... to the cat. Unlike the previous game's Starveling Cat, the Mog isn't supernatural, just vicious.

    Webcomics 
  • Unsounded: Pip, one of Iori's house owls, flies at Duane to attack him when Duane starts threatening and attacking Iori's sister and the girls under her protection. While this does distract Duane for a minute and protect Lori it results in Pip getting killed.

    Western Animation 
  • Animaniacs (1993):
    • In the Buttons and Mindy shorts, Buttons is the pet dog of Mindy, a toddler girl. In these shorts, Mindy often wanders away from her parents to chase something that catches her eye. Buttons spends the shorts protecting Mindy from (and taking beatings from) dangers she is otherwise oblivious to. Although he usually gets chewed out by Mindy's parents for breaking a house rule as a result of keeping Mindy safe, most of his shorts end with Mindy giving him a hug and telling him she loves him.
    • Runt is a Big Friendly Dog traveling with a streetwise cat named Rita. While not very bright, Runt has a strong protective instinct for smaller creatures, such as saving a group of bunnies from a farmer planning to skin them for coats, saving a group of stray kittens, protecting a young girl in World War 2 France so she can reunite with her father, and on one very memorable occasion, saving Rita from unknowingly being sacrificed to the goddess Bastet by being flung into a fire.
      Rita: [as Runt carries her by the scruff of her neck] Runt? What are you doing?
      Runt: Saving your life. Definitely, definitely saving your life.
      Rita: [observes the angry Egyptians denied their sacrifice now giving chase]: Uh-huh... Runt? Can we get the LEAD OUT!?
  • Courage the Cowardly Dog: Despite Courage being terrified of pretty much everything, he loves his owner Muriel enough that he'll do anything to protect her (and her Jerkass husband Eustace, if he has to). Over the course of the cartoon, he's fought monsters, aliens, curses, ghosts, criminals, and pretty much anything else that threatens Muriel.
  • Garfield and Friends: Garfield is typically a Jerkass to Jon and Odie, but heaven help anyone else who attempts to pick on either of them. Garfield once ran off a door-to-door salesman who was attempting to prey on Jon's gullibility.
  • Jonny Quest: Bandit may be a small bulldog pup, but he will actively try to launch himself at anyone or thing that threatens Jonny or Hadji.
  • Jonny Quest: The Real Adventures: "Assault on Questworld" sees Bandit do a flying tackle on a gunman who was trying to shoot Jonny. And after the events of one episode, Bandit is now immortal along with a Healing Factor, meaning that he can take on any threat without fear of lasting harm.
  • Josie and the Pussycats: Sebastian is the troupe's mascot cat, usually in the care of Alexandra Cabot. However, Sebastian will routinely alert the troupe to danger, or rake a villain or a mook with his claws. In one episode, Sebastian actually donned a Fishbowl Helmet to rescue all six humans from prison capsules on the sea floor.
  • Kim Possible: Rufus, Ron's pet naked mole rat, accompanies Ron and Kim on all of their missions and has proven very helpful at filching keys, gnawing through ropes, and/or setting super-villain bases to self-destruct. And Syntho-drone Number 901, aka Eric, really shouldn't have made that crack about Rufus being "gross".
  • Rugrats: Spike is the pet dog of one-year-old Tommy Pickles, and he is very protective of his young master, especially considering that Stu and Didi, Tommy's parents, tend to lose track of Tommy at least once per episode. In "Barbecue Story", Tommy goes to the next-door neighbor's yard inhabited by a mean bulldog to retrieve his favorite ball that his cousin Angelica tossed over the fence, and when Spike hears Tommy's cry for help, he wastes no time in saving Tommy, putting the burgers Stu was cooking and he was eyeing on hold (Stu rewards him with them for saving Tommy).
  • Scooby-Doo: Scooby is typically a Lovable Coward, but he will go out of his way to keep his friends safe, even if his version of this usually involves picking them up and running from the danger at top speed.
    • Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!:
      • In "Never Ape an Ape Man", Scooby actually runs onto a bridge when the titular Ape Man is trying to topple the actress on the bridge, using his body to steady it, and actually delivering some jabs and kicks to the Ape Man.
      • In "That's Snow Ghost", he saves Velma from the Snow Ghost twice, first getting her off a Conveyor Belt o' Doom at a sawmill and then using his tail to propel them away from a cache of dynamite.
      • In "Nowhere to Hyde", Scooby immediately joins the others in hunting for Hyde after he abducts Shaggy and single-handedly rescues Shaggy from Hyde's clutches when he's the first to find the two.
    • What's New, Scooby-Doo?: Do not threaten children or small puppies in front of Scooby Doo. He will suddenly forget to be afraid and remember that he's a full-grown Great Dane (140lbs to 170lbs), and go Papa Wolf on the offender, such as when the Cat Creature attacked Chrissy and her puppies, collectively known as the Secret Six. By the time the creature attacked, Scooby had spent the night keeping the pups safe from a pair of kidnappers, and he wasn't even in the mood to put up with the creature's games. He grabs a serving cart and slams it into the Monster of the Week, then crashes it, immobilizing the monster.
  • Star Trek: The Animated Series: Spock, as a child, had a pet sehlat named I-Chaya who saved him from a venomous le-matya but was bitten by the creature. A young Spock had to euthanize I-Chaya, as there was no antidote to the venom at that time.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003): Master Splinter is an odd variant of this trope. Long ago, he was the pet rat of Hamato Yoshi, a human ninja. Splinter learned ninjutsu by watching his master train, and repeating the moves himself. When Yoshi was killed by the Shredder, Splinter managed to escape. The escape led to his (and the Turtles') mutation. Splinter trains his sons so they their family can fight and defeat Shredder when he appears and avenge Hamato Yoshi.

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