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DogLife Beginner’s Guide: 14 Tips, Tricks & Strategies to Live Your Best Life as a Dog

After weeks of hyping it up, Candywriter finally released DogLife earlier this month for iOS and Android devices. Being that it comes courtesy of the maker of the wildly successful BitLife, this new title offers a similar experience, but instead of playing as a human character of your own creation, you will be playing the role of a dog and choosing any one of four basic settings — you can live your life as somebody’s pet at home, you can be a dog for sale at the Pet Store, you can be an “unloved” mutt at the animal shelter, or you can be a stray trying to rise above the hierarchy and fight for the status of Alpha Male or Alpha Female.

doglife guide

While there are a lot of similarities between BitLife and DogLife, the newer title has enough going for it to make it unique from its predecessor, and even in its early form, it has a whole lot of depth and a wide range of features that could make it just as fun to live your best (or worst) virtual life as a dog or a cat as it was to do so as a human.

That said, here’s a complete DogLife beginner’s guide that contains every tip and pointer you need to know about Candywriter’s latest life simulator — whether you’re a new, intermediate, or advanced player, there should be a new trick or two in this guide for you to learn!

1. The Basics Of DogLife – It Is A Lot Like BitLife For Dogs

You may have seen the comparisons while playing BitLife, but Candywriter is pretty much right on the money when they say DogLife is like BitLife for dogs. But despite the canine-specific name, you can actually choose to play as a cat. So regardless whether you’re a dog person, a cat person, or both, this game will allow you to live your best animal life regardless of which popular pet you choose.

If you’re a free player, you’ll be able to choose the usual variables when starting a new life — you can choose your name, gender, and country and city of origin. Specific to the game is the type of Habitat — you can choose to be a Household pet, which means you’ll be dealing with human families (or solo fur parents) and the other pets they currently have, you can opt for the Street, which is a no-holds-barred scenario where you get to interact with other stray dogs, cats, and other animals, you can choose Shelter, which puts you in an animal shelter, or you can select Pet Store, which is similarly self-explanatory in nature. Your choice of Habitat will have a significant effect on the type of gameplay you can expect while living your character’s life.

The next DogLife-specific field in the New Life screen is Breed, and this is where you can choose from several popular dog and cat breeds. Each breed has their own (seemingly hidden) characteristics that set them apart from others, so it’s more than just aesthetics that are at play when choosing a breed. For example, you would definitely want to play as a Pit Bull, a Rottweiler, or a Doberman Pinscher if you want to be a particularly vicious canine in the game.

doglife new life

By default, you can only select from a few dog breeds in the game, but you can pay $2 USD for the Dog Lover or Cat Lover packages to access all dog and cat breeds respectively. Better yet, if you have $3 USD to spend, you can pay for Top Dog privileges — this is DogLife’s answer to God Mode in BitLife, as it gives you access to all dog AND cat breeds, the freedom to edit most human and animal attributes in the game, but not the person or pet’s gender or job, and not any of the hidden or partly hidden stats.

As you can see, it’s got a lot in common with God Mode in that regard alone. But since we’re still talking about the Start a New Life screen, having Top Dog activated allows you to select your appearance — this is a purely aesthetic choice where you can choose your creature’s primary and secondary fur colors, their snout color, and their eye color. Attributes, meanwhile, is where you can edit the various stats, though we’ll be talking about that in a little more detail later on in the guide.

Related: DogLife Ribbons Guide: How to Get the Ordinary, Wasteful, Bad Dog, Alpha, and Omega Ribbons

After you’ve set everything up for your character, you can start their life and get introduced to your owners, the pet store or shelter employees, and/or any other animal you’ll be interacting with during the course of your virtual life. Whereas tapping on the Age button in BitLife results in your character aging one year (by default), doing the same in DogLife ages your dog or cat by three months — dog and cat years, after all, work differently than human years do. And it’s also possible to start random lives so you can explore all the different possibilities in the game in the most unexpected way possible.

With that out of the way, let’s move on to what we mentioned in the last paragraph — what do each of the stats/attributes do, and how do they affect your character’s prospects?

2. Knowing Your Character’s Stats

In BitLife, all characters have four readily visible stats regardless whether God Mode is activated or not — Happiness, Health, Smarts, and Looks. However, as you may know, there are other stats that can be edited before starting a new life if you have God Mode enabled. The same principle applies in DogLife, where the only stats you will see in most cases are Happiness, Health, Cuteness, and Love. The latter stat, by the way, is dependent on your relationship with your humans and their other pets, so this cannot be edited even if you have Top Dog enabled.

As for the attributes you can edit before starting a new life (again, this is for Top Dog. Users), Cuteness is DogLife’s equivalent of Looks in BitLife, and this could determine how well you are treated by your owners/handlers or how likely you are to attract prospective fur parents at the pet store or shelter. Discipline determines how likely (or unlikely) you are to break stuff while running around the house and playing.

Happiness is self-explanatory, as this determines your state of mind at the start of your virtual life — are you glad to be where you’re at, or are you looking to bolt through the doggy door at the soonest possible moment? Health, again, is self-explanatory — as other animals in the same household, pet store, shelter, or street corner can attack you, this also serves as your “hit point” counter, with 0 percent meaning you are critically injured and may be one attack away from crossing the rainbow bridge.

doglife character attributes

Homosexuality determines how likely you are to “do it” with animals of the same gender. Karma plays a part in how long you live your life or how well you get through tough situations; do good things and this goes up, do bad things and this goes down. Smarts influences how easily you learn new tricks. And lastly, Willpower determines how easily influenced you are, or how easily you’d submit to another animal trying to exert their dominance as the potential alpha male or female in your group.

Aside from the obvious mention of Love from earlier, there are some stats that cannot be edited, regardless whether Top Dog is activated or not. One particular hidden stat we have to mention is Aggression, as this seems to be the stat that determines how much damage you can inflict when attacking humans or other animals — we’re guessing Candywriter doesn’t want players to recreate vicious animal attacks in the DogLife universe, and if that is the case, then fair enough.

Respect also cannot be edited, as this is how much you are respected by the other animals in your environment — it goes up whenever you successfully assert yourself over another animal, and it goes down if you get attacked by these creatures. Craziness, much like it does in BitLife, determines how likely an animal is to do unusual things,

3. About The Various Animal-Human And Animal-Animal Interactions

Initially, you’ll have a few options to choose from when interacting with humans in DogLife, regardless of the Habitat choice — you can show some love by choosing Cuddle, Nuzzle, or Lick, and this would traditionally increase your Love stat and improve your Relationship status with the human you interacted with. The fourth initial option is Sniff, which allows you to sniff their crotch — this works well with animals, but not with humans, so expect to get a stern talking-to and a little decrease to your Love stat and the Relationship bar.

As for the animals you’re living with, the only default interaction that remains uniform regardless of setting is Sniff, and once you’re able to detect a scent from the creature you sniffed, that scent will be added to the Scent Database. We won’t go into the specifics of that feature just yet as it deserves its own separate tip, but in the first year of your life, that’s the only thing you’ll be able to do when dealing with other animals. You can also Lick or Nuzzle animals at birth to show affection, though this won’t always be available from birth, depending on the situation.

Once you reach the age of 6 months, more options will pop up when you click on the human profiles under Household — at that point, you will be able to Bark at them, Beg them for food, Jump on them, or Seek Attention. Bark will typically anger humans, and so will jumping on them — Seek Attention may work in various ways, but if you know a fair bit of tricks, that could work in your favor and improve your relationship. Beg, meanwhile, works well if you’re dealing with a nice and friendly owner, but if you’ve got a not-so-nice human, they’ll likely ignore you if you’re begging for even a small morsel from their plates.

cuddling in doglife

At the age of 9 months, the remaining options become available, and these are Act Sick, Attack, Hump, Lunge, Mess, Snarl, Spend Time, and Urinate. Act Sick can be used if you get a notification telling you that you aren’t feeling well — a nice owner will likely drive you to the vet, while a nasty one will ignore your whimpers and not care if you become sicker.

Obviously, you should only use Attack, Lunge, Mess, Snarl, and Urinate if your goal in your virtual animal life is to be the most obnoxious and/or violent pet you can be. Attack allows you to choose an aggressive action (Slice, Bite, Chomp, etc.) and a body part to target, while Lunge is a more aggressive variant of Jump that is likelier to tick off your humans. Mess is a simple act of mischief such as pooping on your owner’s shoes, and Snarl is a nastier take on the Bark action.

Urinate does exactly what it says on the packaging — this allows you to pee on your owner, and that’s a good way to get them to drive you to the shelter and disown you from their family. And before we forget, you can select Hump in order for you to hump your owner — this could annoy them, but on your end, this could help you maintain your Happiness if you’re in heat and there aren’t any creatures to mate with. Just choose a target body part and the intensity of humping, and you’re all set.

Moving over to the animal side of things, the additional actions that become available once you reach 6 months are as follows: Hiss, Seek Attention, and Submit. Hiss can be used if you’re trying to move up in the hierarchy by intimidating another animal, though this could result in your target fighting back and knocking you down a peg in the food chain. Seek Attention is mostly used as an intimidation tool, and that once again means it could backfire on you if you aren’t careful and choose to intimidate the wrong animal.

Lastly, Submit allows you to concede to another animal and accept the fact that they’re simply more dominant than you are — this is the option you’ll want to choose if you’re okay with being the omega male or female in any given situation.

doglife animal control

Once you reach a year old, Attack, Love, Mate, Mess, Snarl, and Spray may be added to the list of actions you can perform on other animals — the actions may vary depending on your Habitat. Naturally, only Love is designed to have a positive impact on your relationship, though the potential drawback to using Love is that it could get you busted down a bit in the animal hierarchy.

Attacking animals is similar to attacking humans in that you can choose various aggressive moves and a body part to target, Mess is a more trolling way to show disrespect toward another animal, Snarl pretty much does what it says, and Spray is the animal-to-animal version of urinating on a human. Mate may also be available, and this allows you to do the nasty with another animal — they may or may not reciprocate your affections, and if they don’t, they might attack you! (If they do, however, you might end up siring some puppies or kittens, or giving birth to them.)

With smaller animals, you may see the Eat option available, and this could have the positive effect of increasing your Respect among your group of animals, but the negative effect of angering humans — your owners or the pet store/shelter employees. And we also should point out that animals CAN sometimes eat human babies, though as we’ll explain below, that will draw the attention of Animal Control, which, of course, will put you down once they catch you.

4. Becoming Alpha Dog (Or Alpha Cat, If You May)

If you know the expression “it’s a dog-eat-dog world,” you should know what we’re talking about in this section of our DogLife strategy guide. The Hierarchy tab shows you where you rank among all the other animals in the pet store, shelter, or the street, and there are four titles that you can achieve…or avoid getting due to the fact that two of them have a negative connotation. These titles are, of course, are Alpha Male and Alpha Female, and on the opposite, less dominant side of the spectrum, Omega Male and Omega Female.

Your ranking in the Dominance Hierarchy would be determined by your Respect bar, and there are several things you can do to fill up that bar and rise up the hierarchy. Successfully attacking another animal without them retaliating is the most effective — the higher your victim is ranked, the more Respect you can earn. That also includes killing the animal with your attack or eating them — it may be brutal, but those are two ways you can ensure a lot of Respect among your fellow furry creatures.

doglife dominance hierarchy

In addition to injuring or killing animals by attacking/eating them, you can intimidate them by hissing, barking, or snarling at them, or by using the Seek Attention option. Assuming you don’t get attacked for your troubles, this could help move the Respect bar slightly, as well as improve your Dominance Hierarchy ranking.

As for the things you can do (or have done to you) to lose Respect, the one we already mentioned is getting attacked by another animal, either randomly or in retaliation for an aggressive action. Showing affection to another animal, as mentioned, could harm Respect, as animals don’t want to see another creature acting all soft and sentimental, especially if you chose Street as your Habitat or got exiled to the streets for one reason or another.

However, the one thing you can do to lose the most Respect is to Submit to another animal, as this is an acknowledgement that they’re better than you and you’re willing to essentially grovel at their feet.

5. Keep Learning New Tricks To Unlock New Ones

As an animal in the DogLife universe, one thing that is expected of you is to learn a few tricks to impress the humans, and this can be accessed in the Tricks section under Activities, which becomes available once you reach the age of 6 months. Initially, there will be a wide range of basic tricks you can master, such as Shake Hands, Roll Over, Speak, Play Dead, Fetch a Tennis Ball, and others. You can choose to master as few tricks (or none at all, if you please) or as many as you wish, but regardless of which tricks you choose to master, you can only practice it thrice every three months and see a change to your Skill level.

After you’ve mastered so many tricks at the basic level, the game will unlock a number of new tricks that you can practice, such as balancing a ball, using and flushing the toilet, or even opening a beer bottle and rolling a joint. (Yes, the animals of the DogLife universe can roll joints.) These tricks, however, will require more practice before you can master them, given that these are considered intermediate, and later on advanced tricks.

doglife tricks

Given that you’ve got all these various tricks you can practice and eventually master, what is the endgame? For one, it doesn’t affect your Current Value in a household in any way, and it’s not like your humans will see you either while you’re doing your darnedest to roll over or shake hands properly.

However, you will have the option to do some tricks during some animal-human interactions in the game, and that’s a great way to improve your relationship with them and increase your Love stat. And if you’re imprisoned in a shelter or caged at the pet store, doing some tricks could increase your value and attract the attention of potential buyers or owners!

In addition, we did mention above that learning tricks could be a good way to make the Seek Attention interaction with humans work in a positive way — they’ll be more likely to reward you with attention if you’re good at doing a trick, but if you’re rather inept at it, don’t expect them to give you the time of day. (That, of course, could compromise your Happiness and Love while negatively impacting your relationship!)

6. What To Do When Your Female Character Is In Heat

Every once in a while, your female characters in DogLife will be in heat — it’s a natural occurrence in real animals, and it happens as well in the game. That’s why if you’re controlling a female cat or dog in the game, you’ll see an extra option, Scent, in the Activities section. This is best used during those moments when you are in heat, though it can be used at any other time — just tap on Scent, and use the slider to choose the level of pheromones you will release to attract a potential mate.

In some settings, especially if you’re living in a Household, this may not work, and when it doesn’t, you will lose some Happiness. It tends to work much better in the Pet Store, the Animal Shelter, and the Street, where there are a lot of males in your environment, as opposed to Household, where it’s far from guaranteed that your owner has a male pet that’s also a dog or a cat, depending on which animal you chose.

doglife heat

Now if you aren’t able to get any action through releasing Pheromones, you can manually select Mate after tapping on the profile of another animal — take note that this will appear regardless of species, but if you’re a dog trying to mate with a cat, for instance, that is not going to work at all. DogLife, after all, is not in the business of creating mutant babies.

You can, however, increase Happiness (though at the expense of your relationship with the person whose body part you’re humping) by tapping on one of the human profiles and selecting Hump. That will, at least, allow you to get off in the absence of a mate, but since the Happiness lost from not being able to find a mate while in heat is usually negligible, this probably isn’t worth it.

7. You’ll Need To Play A Mini-Game To Escape!

One of the available choices in the Activities section allows you to escape from your household, or from the pet store or animal shelter, and depending on the Habitat you chose at the start of your life, you will play one of two mini-games. For the latter two Habitats, you will be asked to play a mini-game similar to the prison escape mini-game from BitLife.

The good news is that the layouts are relatively simple, and that the same principles apply — the employee will make two moves for every one of your moves, and will always try to walk horizontally at first. If you’ve mastered those principles, or have access to an article or a video that demonstrates how to escape from the minimum or maximum security prisons from BitLife, you should have little problem busting out of the pet store or shelter.

doglife escape

Now if you’re trying to escape from your household, that’s where things vary from the mechanics of DogLife’s more established predecessor. The mini-game here is brand new to DogLife, and the goal is to stop each of the three moving reels in such a way that you get a padlock pattern at the end, with all three pieces of the padlock perfectly aligned. The reels will start moving immediately after the mini-game is launched — you won’t be given any option to tap on the screen when you’re ready.

And while it may seem simple at first,  you should keep in mind that the reels won’t stop immediately after you tap on them. You’ll need to keep a close eye on the reel you’re trying to stop, then tap on your screen with about a second of lead time. Keep applying that same principle for the other two reels, and learn how to predict when and where the reels will stop after you tap on the screen.

If it sounds tricky, that’s because it is, but you can always quit out of the game and restart it if you aren’t able to escape. And we would only recommend escaping if you’ve got a bad owner, or if the pet store/shelter staff aren’t showing you enough love and affection. Furthermore, you can only try one escape before hitting the Age button, and if you get caught by your owner/handler, that’s an immediate rebuke for you, and some damage done to your Relationship bar!

8. Other Options In The Activities Section

The Activities section in DogLife is far from as full-featured as the one in BitLife, but it does offer several things for your animal to do, regardless of their chosen Habitat. Act Up allows you to act up in the house, which is essentially a way of attracting attention that could increase your Happiness but tick off humans in the process — think of it as the Seek Attention option for animal-to-human interactions, but more intense.

doglife activities

Play allows you to amuse yourself by playing with various household items, chasing your tail, or doing other cute critter stuff that doesn’t cause trouble at home…until it does. That’s right — this could help increase your Happiness, but there is a chance you might break something and incur the wrath of your owner. Then you’ve got the Time Machine, which, for a fee of $1 USD per usage, allows you to go back in time by various intervals — it can be as recent as 3 months ago or as far back as 3 years ago.

There are other activities that are unique to certain Habitat types, and we’ll be explaining them below. But it’s the ones above that you can expect to see in most Habitats, particularly Households, so keep those in mind in case you’re looking for something new to do in DogLife!

9. Living In A Household – Be Nice To Your Humans And They’ll Pay It Back…Usually

Choosing the Household option in the Habitat section before starting a new life gives you the most conventional setting when getting started in DogLife — you get to live with other humans and their pets, if any. However, just as we humans cannot choose our parents, animals cannot choose their owners (at least in this in-game setting), so the drawback here is that you won’t be able to control whether you end up with a friendly owner or a nasty one, unless you’ve got Top Dog and you edit the humans’ stats to make them more welcoming to your kind.

Basically, the ideal goal when living in a household is to boost that Love stat over time by showing love to your owner — and hoping against hope that they show some love to you. If they take you on a walk, don’t complain; go along with them and behave yourself around other humans. If they take you on a drive, chances are it’ll be a trip to the vet for a routine check-up.

doglife walk

Learning tricks can give you an opportunity to impress a seemingly jaded owner, so don’t give up that easily and bolt for the door if they don’t reciprocate your cuddles and nuzzles. If worse comes to worst, Top Dog users can edit human stats, as we mentioned, or if not, you can make a dash for freedom by playing the Escape mini-game we detailed above. That will leave you to take your chances on the streets, but at least it gives you a chance to get adopted by someone from a more loving household.

Of course, you also have the option to play the bad dog or bad kitty by acting up, attacking humans, peeing on them, and performing other acts of mischief or malevolence, but if a human loses their patience with you, your most likely landing spot is the Animal Shelter.

10. Pet Store And Shelter Life – Play Around And Do Tricks To Attract Potential Owners

The gameplay in the Pet Store and Shelter Habitats is pretty similar, though there are some differences, which we shall be explaining to you in a bit. In both Habitats, though, the premise is the same — you’re essentially born caged, and there will always be two humans you can interact with, namely the Pet Store or Shelter’s employees. Much like owners in a Household, each employee has two visible stats, Relationship and Friendliness, though there are various other stats you can edit if you have Top Dog enabled.

Also, the ideal objective would be the same in both settings, and that’s to choose the right owner and convince them to buy or adopt you by doing cute things like playing with stuff, attracting attention by jumping, barking, or making puppy dog eyes, or, if you’ve reached a certain age, practicing tricks. Oftentimes, if you choose not to do any of these things, a random NPC will walk into the pet store or shelter and offer to buy or adopt you after you hit the Age button.

doglife pet store

Regardless whether or not you organically caught their attention, you will then have the option to act welcoming toward them or not — choosing Ignore, Snarl, and Flash Anus, for instance, tell the prospective owner that you aren’t interested, while choosing Give Him/Her Puppy Dog Eyes, Nuzzle, or other positive actions let them know you’d like them to purchase or adopt you.

Sometimes, they’ll ignore your positive interactions and pass on you, and sometimes, they’ll turn a blind eye to your aggressive behavior and buy/adopt you anyway — these things do happen. But if you see a high Friendliness human, your first instinct should be to behave positively, and if their Friendliness is in the orange or red zone, you should try turning them away through some belligerent or hostile behaviors like the ones we mentioned above.

The Dominance Hierarchies for Pet Store and Shelter, meanwhile, are noticeably different. In the former Habitat, you will be ranked alongside different breeds and species, while in the latter, you’ll only be ranked alongside your fellow cats or dogs, depending on which animal you chose. The same principles of earning and losing respect apply here, however.

doglife riot

As for unique activities, Riot is unique to Shelters, and it works exactly the same as the Riot mini-game in BitLife — it’s a twist on Snake where your objective is to run into other animals to form a progressively longer chain without running into walls or Shelter employees. Most Riots will result in animals getting injured (yourself potentially included), though some of them may be successful, thus allowing you and your fellow creatures to escape the Shelter for the uncertainty of the streets.

11. Life On The Streets – Giving Dog Eat Dog A New Meaning

The last Habitat type we shall be discussing in this guide is the Street, and the plus side here is that you don’t need to deal with any cold or cruel human NPCs, as the case might be if you choose any of the other three Habitats. However, it’s not like you’re going to have any friends either, as living on the streets is all about rising up the ranks in the Dominance Hierarchy and becoming the Alpha Male or Alpha Female of the block.

There may be situations where you may encounter a human and they may adopt you off the streets, upon which the usual options apply — you can show them love or show them anger, depending on their Friendliness or how willing you are for them to adopt you. But if you get into too many fights with other animals, especially ones where you end up on the losing end, your Cuteness may become so compromised that most people wouldn’t give you the time of day, even if you impress them otherwise with your ability to do tricks.

doglife animal catcher

And you better believe there will be a lot of opportunities to scrap with the other animals on the block — even tiny little rats can pack quite the wallop in their attacks, as we found out the hard way during one test run!

Another thing to look out for is the presence of the Animal Catcher, who could randomly show up and threaten to send you and your fellow strays to the Shelter. This would lead to a mini-game where you will have to tap on the screen to jump over obstacles — if you’re able to avoid all the obstacles in the mini-game, your life on the streets will resume as normal, but if you miss just one of them, it’s back to the Shelter for you. This may not work for you if you were your area’s alpha, but if you’d rather be in a loving household with human owners, being in a Shelter might offer you a better chance of getting adopted.

12. The Street Offers Various Unique Activities And A Couple New Mini-Games

Due to how different the Activities sub-menu is for Street dwellers, we decided to make this a tip of its own — you will indeed notice that aside from Play, Time Machine, and Tricks, the list of activities for stray dogs and cats is definitely unique. And if you thought the mini-games were over, then think again — there are a couple new, but familiar ones you will encounter here.

doglife scavenge

The first mini-game pops up when you choose the Scavenge option — you’ll need to tap on the trash can that contains food. That may sound easy at first, but once the game shows you where the fish bone is located, the trash cans will move around quickly for a few seconds until they stop. If you’re quick enough to remember which can contains the fish bone, you should do well here, but otherwise, you’ve got a 33 percent chance of finding some food and recovering some health after a fight.

Next, we have the swimming mini-game that appears when you choose to have a swim in the Sewer — this is essentially DogLife’s version of Flappy Bird, as the mechanics are exactly identical. Swim through the three pipes and avoid hitting any of them before reaching the finish line. Hit one of the obstacles and you suffer an injury, make it to the finish line and get a unique chance to start a new life in a faraway country.

travelling in doglife

Yes, you read that correctly — if you complete the Sewer mini-game, you will be asked whether you wish to stow away on a cargo ship or not. Opt against this and it’s back to the streets, opt for it and you can choose to get off at any one of the (random) countries the ship stops over at.

The Wander option under Activities does not contain any mini-games, but it gives you a choice to find a new street corner to wander off to, or possibly return to any one of the locations where you last dealt with humans — it may be a past Household, the Pet Store, or the Shelter.

doglife mini-game

While in some cases you won’t have any choice but to comply — for example, the Shelter employees may capture you without any questions asked — there may be some instances where you can choose to act remorseful in hopes that your former owner will welcome you back, or take revenge on them by attacking them.

Last, but not least, is the Witch Doctor option, which is similar to the BitLife version — there’s only a small chance they’ll be able to cure whatever is ailing you. Likewise, visiting the Witch Doctor offers all sorts of possibilities, such as ending up with all your stats cut in half, all your stats boosted to 100 percent, or sadly, dying after consuming whatever they gave you.

13. What Happens When You Attack A Human?

It is what it is — a lot of players enjoy playing BitLife because of the bad things they can make their Bitizens do. You can also do bad things as a dog or a cat in DogLife, and that includes, but is not limited to attacking your human overlords, er…owners, regardless of their age or gender.

There are various ways you can go about this — Bite, Chomp, Scratch, Maul, Slice, and Nibble are just a few of the methods that appear in the drop-down box whenever you have an opportunity to attack — but if you’re able to attack your target successfully, this could lead to injury, or in some cases, even death. (And just as we noted above, you can eat human babies in DogLife, just like you can eat smaller animals like parakeets or guinea pigs!)  That said, it seems harder to successfully attack humans in DogLife than it is to attack NPC Bitizens in BitLife.

doglife eat play love

If you live in a Household and you unsuccessfully try to attack one of your owners, there is a chance that you will merely be shouted at and told not to do that again. But if you do attack successfully, the chances of a mere reprimand become much slimmer — instead, the most likely outcome will be a drive to the animal shelter, or to the veterinarian where you will be neutered or spayed against your will. (You can also choose to attack the vet — if you connect, they will most likely give up on you and send you back to your owner, and if you don’t, the process will continue as planned, whether you like it or not.) Think of the trip to the shelter as a second chance to do good — or a second chance to wreak some havoc on a household if you choose to live your virtual life that way.

If any of your attacks results in somebody getting killed, you won’t be dealing with angry owners sending you to the shelter or to the veterinarian. Instead, you’ll be dealing with Animal Control, which would usually mean the end of your life as you know it. Again, one of the options is to attack the shelter volunteers after you’ve been dropped off, at which point you can potentially escape to the street, but the chances are doing so are slim.

doglife new home

Most of the time, they’ll end up putting you to sleep as the ultimate punishment for killing a human — may it be your owner, your owner’s kids, your owner’s partner, or even the mailman. You can also choose to show remorse by flashing puppy-dog eyes or showing similar signs of affection, but that isn’t likely to sway the volunteers and prevent them from euthanizing you. (Snarling or hissing at them, which may also be available, will make them even more likely to put you down.)

The last option is to escape to the streets, which would launch a mini-game similar to the prison escape mini-game from BitLife, and this could be your best hope of cheating death at the hands of the shelter volunteers. Otherwise, it’s curtains for you and your character’s life — this isn’t like in BitLife, where they simply extend your sentence if you’re caught trying to escape from jail or prison!

14. Using The Scent Database – What’s It For?

Probably at this point in the DogLife strategy guide, you’re wondering what all that crotch-sniffing was for. It doesn’t work well with humans, but you can do it on other animals and most of the time, they won’t give you trouble for it.

sniffing in doglife

Well, those scents you picked up from those creatures’ sensitive areas all go to the Scent Database, and in here, you can view every animal whose crotch you’ve sniffed, as well as the odor you detected, may it be pleasant or not. We’ve briefly touched on that in this guide, but what’s the point of all this, and how can you make the Scent DB work for you?

If you are still in the company of the animal whose crotch you’ve sniffed, their name, avatar, breed, and scent will all appear as normal in the Scent DB. But if you’ve been adopted, rescued, or purchased by a new human owner and are no longer in the company of the animal, or if they simply ran away, you’ll see a red question mark next to their avatar.

locating a dog in bitlife

Tap on that animal, then tap on the blue “Locate Him/Her” button, and you will be informed where the animal is currently living, and whether they’re dead or alive. You’ll also be notified of their current Health. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to bring the animal along with you after you’ve located them, but the Scent DB does at least give you a snapshot of where a former animal acquaintance is at any given point in the game.

And this ends our comprehensive beginner’s guide for DogLife. If you happen to know more tips or tricks for the game, don’t hesitate to drop us a line!