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

Released late last year, Candywriter’s DogLife was the sequel to the company’s massively popular and successful life simulator game, BitLife. Instead of controlling virtual humans, however, this game allows you to live your best (or worst) life as a dog or a cat, with several breeds available to choose from and a whole world of possibilities available depending on the decisions you make.

And while this feature initially wasn’t available on DogLife when it first rolled out, Candywriter added one of the more popular BitLife features to the game soon after — the ability to collect ribbons corresponding to the way you lived your life as your canine or feline character. Currently, there are 23 ribbons in the game, though we’re confident that Candywriter will be adding more at some point in the future, much like they did with BitLife.

In this first DogLife strategy guide for ribbons, we shall be keeping it simple and focusing on some of the easier ribbons to collect. We won’t be going into as much detail as we do on BitLife, as in that latter game, getting certain ribbons may require making life decisions that do not apply to the animal kingdom.

But we’ll be telling you everything you need to know about each of these ribbons — Ordinary, Wasteful, Bad Dog, Alpha, and Omega — and how you can add each of them to your collection. There will be more guides of this kind to follow in the coming weeks, so keep on reading as we start off nice and easy with these five ribbons!

Ordinary Ribbon

Being an Ordinary dog or cat in DogLife is all about going with the flow. You’re not trying for any specific ribbon except the most basic one of them all, so there’s no need to act especially aggressive or passive, no need to learn any tricks, no need to be extra affectionate toward your owners or handlers. Just do what you think the average dog or cat would do in such a situation, because the goal here is to be as unremarkable, or even as boring as possible.

There are, however, some situations where collecting the Ordinary ribbon may get slightly tricky, and these would be the ones where the natural order of things makes it highly likely that you’ll get another ribbon instead. For example, you may end up with more offspring than what you have intended due to all the times you were in heat and were able to attract a mate, thus increasing the chances of a Fertile ribbon.

Or you may have ended up with a nasty owner who reprimands you for the smallest infraction, hence making you a candidate for the Bad Dog ribbon. You may choose to continue with your life and see if you could get that other ribbon, or you can also exit out of the game before confirming the outcome, then restart the game in hopes of things being less eventful the next time you tap on the Age button.

But keep in mind that in most cases where you’re playing the game as you normally would, your character will get the Ordinary ribbon at the end of their life, much like most BitLife characters will die with the Mediocre ribbon.

Wasteful Ribbon

In the original BitLife, Wasteful is the ribbon given to characters who basically waste their potential or die young as a result of their own bad decisions. For example, this could include characters who were executed after receiving the death penalty for a series of murders, but weren’t exactly in and out of prison in the years prior to that conviction. There’s something similar at play in DogLife, and that’s because Wasteful is typically given to dogs or cats who are euthanized for bad behavior at a young age.

In order to get the Wasteful ribbon, all you need to do is to get into some sort of trouble that could get you euthanized, may it be repeatedly attacking humans or other animals or better yet, killing a human. That latter action will automatically draw the attention of Animal Control, so when Animal Control tries to catch you for your dastardly deeds, make sure you cooperate and don’t try to escape to the streets.

Don’t fight back either when they try to euthanize you — just go along with it, because while your animal character will be dying at a young age, that will also add the Wasteful ribbon to your collection.

Take note that the Wasteful ribbon is not to be confused with Unlucky — we’ll be discussing this ribbon in depth at a later time, but while Unlucky also involves dying young, it mainly requires circumstances that are out of your control as a player.

Bad Dog Ribbon

The Bad Dog ribbon is awarded to dogs (or even cats) who live an entire lifetime of being reprimanded by their owners or handlers. This may seem easy to accomplish, but it may also turn out to be too easy, assuming you’re aiming for a ribbon such as Killer Dog but don’t kill as often as you are reprimanded by humans.

In any case, the important thing to remember is that you should focus on all sorts of bad behavior — acting up, jumping on humans, messing with them, or even vomiting or peeing on them. Humans also don’t liked to be humped by their pets, and if you’re dealing with a human character whose Kindness isn’t on the up-and-up, even gentler actions like licking them, nuzzling them, or cuddling with them can merit a reprimand from these curmudgeonly sorts. In general, however, you should focus primarily on bad behavior when trying to get the Bad Dog ribbon.

While it isn’t absolutely necessary, players who have the Top Dog feature enabled in DogLife can set certain stats to a certain level to make it easier to get the Bad Dog ribbon. You can set Discipline and Willpower to be especially low, and if you’re trying to get the Bad Dog ribbon through belligerent behavior, having high Strength helps a lot.

Alpha Ribbon

The description of the Alpha ribbon reads, “Be a pack leader for life,” though we can assure you that this is mostly optional. It is important that you strive to keep your Respect stat as close to 100 percent at all times and try to maintain your status as Alpha Male or Female for as long as possible. But don’t worry too much if you ever lose some Respect (but not a lot of it) — it is still important to be the top male or female animal in your habitat, but having 100 percent Respect at all times isn’t mandatory.

In order to get the Alpha ribbon, you should, in as much as possible, be as aggressive as possible toward other animals. Attack them whenever possible, and when it comes to the Dominance Hierarchy, it doesn’t hurt to be a bully — you can get your Respect boosted simply by attacking animals who are at the bottom, though you should also check their Aggression stats before attacking.

If they’re too aggressive, meaning their Aggression bar is at least 80 percent full, it’s best to avoid them. Passive ones, meaning those whose Aggression bar is only 30 percent full or less, are fair game. Avoid showing any love or making any affectionate gestures, i.e. playing, toward other animals, even if they happen to be your own mates or children. You may, however, want to avoid killing too many animals so you don’t unintentionally get the Killer Dog ribbon, though the occasional kill will certainly be good for your Respect.

For dogs and cats with high Strength stats (adjustable upon creation if you have Top Dog, otherwise hidden), this should be an easy ribbon to collect; expect some challenges if your Strength stats are low to average, though take note that it may not be as hard as you think to get the ribbon even in such a situation. We also recommend setting high Strength stats for your character if Top Dog is enabled, as this should allow you to do a lot of damage when attacking other animals and establishing your dominance.

Omega Ribbon

The exact opposite of the Alpha ribbon, Omega is the ribbon given out to dogs or cats in DogLife who, according to the description, “pass a life without respect.” That would mean remaining at the bottom of the pecking order in the Dominance Hierarchy for most of your life, regardless of your habitat at the time. To ensure this, you need to do everything that an Alpha wouldn’t do. Instead of picking fights with other animals, you should do whatever you could to avoid confrontation.

That means not attacking if you notice one animal trying to bully another, submitting whenever an animal tries to pick on you, and choosing not to take any action if you get a prompt notifying you that you have suspicions one of the other animals will try to kill you while you’re sleeping. You can also keep hitting the Age button without doing anything, just as long as you’ve made sure your Respect stats and your place in the hierarchy is as low as possible.

There are some slight risks to being the ultimate pushover in DogLife, but they aren’t anywhere near as close as they are if you’re trying to chase the Alpha ribbon or any other ribbon that involves some form of aggressive behavior.

No matter how you meet your end in the game, whether you get euthanized, killed by another animal, killed in an accident, or die of natural causes, you should get the Omega ribbon simply by being the most passive, non-confrontational dog or cat you can be. That makes it one of the easier ribbons to collect in DogLife, though not as easy as it would be if you’re trying to get the Ordinary ribbon.