Building a Dog Army in Minecraft - For Dummies

Many beginning Minecraft players enjoy getting a dog — they are a man's best friend. In Minecraft, growing a pack of dogs (or a dog army) can have several advantages. Tamed wolves (known as dogs) will attack any mob (except creepers) that either attack their owner (player) or is attacked by their owner. This provides a player with a walking army that not only protects from hostile mobs, but will also attack other types of mobs (such as passive mobs) providing a player with a significant amount of loot.

To build your dog army, you will need to find a wolf. All versions of Minecraft (PC, PE, and Console) have wolves. They are found exclusively in the Forest and Taiga (any type of Taiga) biome. Unless you want to switch to Creative mode, you will need to find two wolves to tame.

To tame a wolf, you will need to feed it a bone. Finding bones is relatively easy by defeating skeletons but can also be found in chests. Once two wolves are tamed (they will change in appearance), they can be bred to create your army. It is much easier to breed wolves then to continue to find the limited number that naturally spawn in the game.

To breed, simply feed the wolves with any type of meat (not fish) including raw or cooked forms of beef, chicken, mutton, rabbit, porkchops, and even rotten flesh. Food poisoning does not apply to dogs, so raw chicken and rotten flesh are perfectly fine to use. Puppies will be hungry, so have plenty of food on hand before breeding. Console edition will limit your dog army to 16 dogs, but that should be plenty.

Dogs will naturally follow their owners, so don't worry about losing your dogs. When your dogs become hurt or hungry, you can heal them with meat. Fortunately, they are good at killing their own meat.

For those not in PE edition, you may want to consider adding a cat army to your dog army. Cats will repel creepers. By mixing dogs and cats together, you will be virtually immune to hostile mobs. Cats can also be left patrolling your house (or base) to prevent creeper invasions.

To tame an ocelot, found exclusively in the Jungle biome, you will need to feed it multiple servings or raw fish (any type of fish will work). When tamed, the cat will change from a Jaguar type appearance to one of 3 common cat colors — a ginger tabby, tuxedo (from Notch's own cat), or Siamese. Unlike their dog counterparts, cats do not heal from food, only from potions.

Obviously, a dog army is easier to create and more useful. Fortunately, you can have both (unless playing in PE mode). So become Leader of the Pack and the crazy cat person and build yourself that army.