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Wild Dogs	War Dogs	Wolves	Dire Wolves	Winter Wolves
Wargs	Pigeons	Ravens	Hawks or Falcons	Golden Eagles
Bald Eagles	-	-	-	-
Dungeons & Dragons	AD&&D	-	Dragon magazine	The Dragon #29

After playing Dungeons & Dragons for awhile, and working with
the average non-player character (NPC) hireling, one may become disillusioned
with them. They are unpredictable, at times shifty, and their
demands constantly bombard their poor masters. Some hirelings are
better than others, obviously, but it is difficult to place one’s trust in one
too explicitly. Therefore, I have developed an alternative.

For thousands of years man has been taming dogs, birds, and like
animals for protection and other uses. Dogs were used to help in tracking
and hunting and to protect encampments during the night. Birds of
all kinds, from eagles to thrushes, were used in many aspects of
medieval life. Animals were safer than humans to have around; after all,
a dog won’t wait until his master has gone to sleep at night to attack him.
Their demands are small enough; all they need is a bit of meat each day
to keep them happy. Therefore, it is my belief that it would be highly
profitable to introduce such animals into your campaign. The following
list deals with a few animals and how they might be handled.

PIGEONS: These small swift birds are highly useful in many situations.
Although they do not fight, they have an excellent homing ability which
allows them to be used as messengers. It would be wise to have someone
from the town or city that a character is based in to check the pigeons’
nesting place for messages from time to time. (Messages are
useless unless they are received.) Pigeons take one point of damage,
have an armor class of 8, and fly 28 inches per turn. They cost 10 G.P.

It should be noted that trained animals are not affected by greed or
pride, but they do have a morale roll like other N.P.C.s. When failing to
make their morale, animals will generally try to escape. Animals will
only attack their masters during an act of cruelty.

Many other animals can be trained. Feel free to change the statistics
of the animals listed, or invent new ones. After, all, these are not
rules to be used with trained animals, they are just my conception of
how they could be handled.