HaiGan posted at 2:01PM Thu, 18 February 2016 - #4255714

I only have the one myself but I know some of the other dog walkers around here to talk to, some of them might let me point a camera at their canine companions. It's just a bit random who I meet in any given week of walkies (and whether it's tipping down with rain). From my recollections of teaching labs to 'shake', they have proportionally wider paws with more rounded toes (which makes the claws seem less prominent), and the two center toes don't have the claws so close together, much more like a toon-ish or generic dog paw than the whippet/greyhound paw. My dog's paw's width is about half the height of my palm; labradors of the same height as my dog or a little shorter have paws that fill my palm, so about twice the width of the whippet.

A species like a dog is always going to be a problem for morphs because humans have developed them into so very many shapes- how similar is a dachshund to a mastiff? It may not be possible to come up with one model that does everything. In terms of a 'generic' dog, dogs themselves revert to a very similar type where you get breeding feral populations, regardless of where that population is and what stock it derives from: the 'pariah' type (which, to confuse things, also seems to have been taken as an official breed as well). You can Google it quite easily, but to me it looks something like a mashup between a labrador, pointer, malinois and husky, tending towards a lighter frame in hot climates and a stockier frame in cold ones.

Hope your other projects are going well, Lyrra!

Could also think on these ideas. Swimming/retriever dogs like the Lab or Newfoundlander will by nature of their breeding purposes have wider feet for better movement in water and stability on ground to fetch masters kills. Stable on feet are good for seeing eye dogs. Running dogs will have different foot/paw architecture to allow better speed/traction/etc. like the Whippit and greyhound Bigger dogs will have bigger paws and smaller dogs smaller paws, etc. German Shepherds like wolves and huskies will also have bigger feet i think because of their nature in the environments bred/used as working dogs. Hairy dogs will have hairier paws which will assuredly hide the claws and appear wider/bigger on the model especially if hair is not included. I am not a dog expert but I love dogs and have seen these differences to varying degrees in dogs I have observed.