How many of you remember when Jagex said they would never add dogs or horses into the game?

Looks around.

Hmm, alot of hands(sarcasm).

Most of you are probably thinking, “When did they say that? I never read it”, well that’s because they’ve removed it from their site (or atleast I think they have since I can’t find it).

As you can see, their ‘never’ is only a few years, not the infinity most of us believe it to be. They added dogs as pets when they added summoning. Now I’m not saying this is a bad thing, I’m just saying that shouldn’t have said never.

But that’s not the point of this article.

I’m sure most of you know about Gertrude’s Cat, Rat Catchers, Icthlarin’s Little Helper, and other Cat related quests. All of these require you to use your pet cat (except Gertrude’s Cat, where you gain a pet kitten). But there are no quests which require dogs.

Almost everybody knows that dogs are very intelligent animals and are usually more friendly than cats (I know, there are some exceptions), so why don’t we have any dog quests?

Since dogs are intelligent, Jagex could add an ‘Animal Handler’ skill. The purpose of this skill would be to train dogs (yours and other people’s) and to be able to tame, rear(bring up), and train wild animals. Unfortunately, most people probably wouldn’t like a skill like this and it could be combined with Summoning, so it would never be added.

Dogs are smart. They have been trained to do hundreds of tasks. From opening a refrigerator door to tracking and digging out a victim of an avalanche.

With so many possibilities, it wouldn’t be hard for Jagex to allow either you or an NPC to train your pet dog to do something (the amount of tricks the dog could learn could be random or determined by your Quest Points, Combat level, or Summoning level).

Here’s a few things which they could be trained to do:

Tracking – They could help you track down kebbits or other, unreleased, animals when hunting. This could also be useful in those quests where you must track people.
Schutzhund – For those of you who don’t know what it is, Schutzhund is the name of the training an attack or guard dog must go through.. If you’ve ever seen a Police dog then you’ve probably seen a Schutzhund dog. They could be trained to attack creatures which would auto you before you get hit.
Rat Terriers – Most Terriers were originally bred to hunt rats. These could be used to hunt rats for game(fun), or possibly incorporated into the Rat Catchers quest (Charm the people with a Ring of Charos(a) into thinking it’s just a big cat).
Sledding – You dog could pull a small sled or cart around behind you for an unlimited amount of time (so long as you kept it’s hunger below 30% percent). Its carrying capacity would be based on weight(kg).
Herding – You could tell your dog to herd sheep into a small pen to make it easier to shear them. Herding could also be used for other things.

There are many things dogs could do to help with everyday activities. Since Jagex has already added dogs, they should now change them to be more useful than just something to waste your steaks on.