Dog ASCII Art: Copy and Paste Dogs, Puppies and Long Dogs

Ears decide the breed

In text, the ears do most of the work of saying which kind of dog it is. Pointy ears use a slash and a backslash, as in /\, and read as a husky or a shepherd. Floppy ears hang down the side of the head with brackets or a backslash, and read as a spaniel or a beagle. A long body made of underscores reads as a dachshund:

   __      _
 o'')}____//
  '_/      )
  (_(_/-(_/

That little dachshund is an old piece of internet folk art; nobody knows who drew it first.

Small dog faces for chat

For a reaction in chat you only need a face. These use plain keyboard characters except the last two, which use Unicode and work on most devices:

U o.o U     U ^.^ U     (o'.'o)
ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ     U・ᴥ・U

The U on each side is a floppy ear. The ᴥ in the last face is a small letter that looks like a dog's nose and mouth, which is why it shows up in so many Unicode animal faces.

Getting a good result from a dog photo

Fur is the hard part. Long or curly fur is full of fine detail that turns into random characters, so the tool on this page uses extra contrast, which flattens the fur into areas of light and dark. Crop to the head, use a photo where the dog is clearly lighter or darker than the background, and keep the width around 60 characters for chat.

Dark eyes and a dark nose are the features that make a dog recognisable at small sizes. If they disappear, lower Brightness a little; if the whole face goes dark, switch on Invert Light/Dark.