#laoft ritter

[tulipscomeinallsortsofcolors]

When you picture Ritter, what kind of dog is he?

Ritter is a high-content coydog, with a mottle black coat. i dont have a specific dog breed in mind other than Large - he looks mostly like a coyote, but he's about twice the size

so top contenders to result in the size and coat color would probably be a st bernard or a great dane (or maybe a collie, if the coys in his line had enough dog ancestry way back to give them that fully black coat) but Ritter's dog ancestor was a grandparent, and he's far more coy than dog

[tulipscomeinallsortsofcolors]

Hey so we had to put down our dog today (it wasn’t unexpected she was old and had a heart condition it was just a bit fast) and I was wondering if I could get something about (I think it was trudies) dog familiar? -slap Dee anon

I’m very sorry to hear about your dog, and i would be happy to!

So - Ritter! Greta’s dog/coyote hybrid familiar

a good good big rowdy boy

can dog-bark AND coyote-scream, delights in freaking people out

felt guilty for a g e s about biting Toby in the second chapter of Gifts even though it was a panic response to Greta being in pain

followed Virgil around for ages after Virgil met Greta, neither he nor Greta felt the need to introduce him to Virgil for like... months

in fact Virgil didn’t properly meet Ritter until after for who would inhabit this bleak world alone?

At which point Greta introduced him and Virgil was like, “Oh, so that wasn’t an oversized coyote thats been stalking me since i met you it was this bastard”

Loves To Wrastle

ESPECIALLY loves to wrastle Virgil, who can pick him up like Ritter is still a ten pound lap dog and which Ritter thinks is fantastic fun

Ritter with Trudi’s rabbit familiar, Schatzi, was like,,, impossibly precious

Slightly less precious-looking is “teenage” Jax and Ritter, who was going silver around the muzzle - so please picture a huge, ominous looking wild black and silver dog with a goddamn turkey vulture perched on its back in the middle of the road at midnight and LOOK ME IN THE EYES and tell me you wouldn’t flip shit in terror

Will, In Fact, Lick You To Death

[tulipscomeinallsortsofcolors]

What breed of dog is Ritter? I always imagined him as a little fox terrier but I don’t Thai k that’s correct xD

Ritter is actually a coydog, a coyote/domestic dog hybrid. i dont have anything too specific for what breed of dog is mixed with the coyote

(specifically Eastern Coyote, itself a coyote-wolf hybrid species)

besides “dark colored and absolutely fucking huge” - maybe a Beauceronor some kind of mountain dog like a Greater Swiss or Bernese. or maybe a Rottweiler.

and its almost certainly more likely to be a combination of some or all and more of those -  Ritter’s very much a mutt, and no matter what breeds he’s got Greta didn’t pick him out of a litter. more like pick him out of rummaging through a dumpster

but i digress - the idea is that Ritter doesn’t actually look much like a domestic dog at all, and more like an enormous, mostly black coyote - the narrow snout, very big ears, the bushy tail.

He very much looks more like a wild animal than a domesticated one, hence the reason he makes folks so fucking nervous - he definitely gives of “leave your livestock and fingers unattended in my presence at your own risk” vibes to anyone who isnt Greta, Virgil, Toby, or Trudi. MAYBE Greta’s parents. on a good day

When Greta’s not with him, he’s frequently mistaken for a church grim

[tulipscomeinallsortsofcolors]

What was Ritter like? Did he became Greta's familiar after or before she met Virgil?

there’s two options for when Greta got her familiar i havent decided between yet - either right when she moved to Wickhills and therefore just before she met Virgil

or between when she met Virgil and when she gave Virgil her name, so some time during the course of for who would inhabit this bleak world alone?

either way, Virgil didn’t Officially Meet Ritter until after for who would inhabit, though he probably did come across a ‘feral’ coydog a couple times and think “gee thats a weirdly familiar mutt”

as for what he was like - Ritter was a coyote-dog hybrid with a stubborn streak a mile wide and all the subtlety the gods gave a blunt rusty axe. He liked to Wrestle and also Yell

The number of times Ritter decided they WERE playing tug of war whether Virgil liked it or not is nigh-on-innumerable. Virgil was also his preferred wrestling partner, running partner, Shenanigans Otherwise Not Specified Partner, etc

Ritter liked a very short list of people - Greta, Virgil, Trudi, Toby, and then later May, and that was just about it.

the other residents of Wickhills were not very fond of “the Baumgartener brats mutt” and this is one situation where you kinda cant even blame them because Ritter was just as likely to chase folks off snapping as he was to just bark/bay at them. he honestly was not very friendly to non-family