After 13 Years, Old School RuneScape Finally Has Dogs — A Ruff Situation Quest Is Live

It only took 13 years, but Old School RuneScape players can finally have a dog. The A Ruff Situation quest went live on September 8, 2026, and with it came something the OSRS community has been asking Jagex for basically since the game launched in 2013: actual domestic dog pets. No more cat exclusivity. No more staring at Varrock’s stray dogs and wishing they could follow you home. The wait is over, and it genuinely couldn’t have landed with more enthusiasm — this is one of the most community-demanded additions in the game’s entire history.

Here’s everything you need to know about the quest itself, how dogs work as pets, all 12 breeds, what your dog can actually do for you once it grows up, and why the polling numbers behind this update are some of the highest ever seen for an OSRS update.

How to Start A Ruff Situation

A Ruff Situation is a members-only quest with a minimum requirement of 15 Crafting to complete. You won’t need to be a high-level player to jump in — it’s listed as a Novice-tier quest, so it’s genuinely accessible to most active members.

To start, head to the camp just south-west of the Edgeville Monastery (also described as near Ice Mountain) and speak to Talia. She and her colleague Chase have set up a new dog shelter in the area but are struggling to get it off the ground, and they need your help. The quest involves rescuing dogs across Gielinor, doing some light crafting work (including sewing a stuffed dog), and interacting with some of Gielinor’s most beloved existing characters — including a trip to see Gertrude west of Varrock, the NPC who introduced players to cats way back in the day.

There are some fun little Easter eggs baked in too. Wearing a catspeak amulet while interacting with your dog gets a specific reaction. Talking to Talia while wearing cat ears causes your character to say “Meow-llo there,” to which Talia flatly refuses to continue the conversation. Jagex clearly had fun writing this one.

old school runescape a ruff situation quest

How Do Dogs Work as Pets?

Once you complete the quest, you can purchase a puppy from Chase at the Dog Shelter for just 200 coins. From there, the puppy works similarly to kittens — but with one key difference that dog lovers will immediately appreciate: dogs do not run away if you forget to feed them. If you stop feeding your puppy, its growth simply pauses. You can keep it as a puppy indefinitely by just not feeding it, or you can commit to raising it into a fully grown adult dog.

Growth into an adult dog takes approximately three hours of active growth while the puppy is following you. You can only have one puppy in your possession at a time, but that’s separate from your menagerie. Here’s a summary of how puppy and dog ownership works:

• Puppies cost 200 coins from Chase at the Dog Shelter
• Growth takes roughly three hours of active time following you while fed
• Stop feeding to pause growth permanently — keep a puppy forever if you want
• Puppies are lost on death, so be careful
• You can house up to 12 dogs in your Player-Owned House Menagerie — one of every breed
• The menagerie supports multiple dogs of different breeds simultaneously, unlike cats

What Can Fully Grown Dogs Do?

This is where dogs go beyond being purely cosmetic companions. Once your puppy has grown into an adult dog, it gains a genuinely useful gameplay function: dogs can dig for Treasure Trail steps, removing the need to carry a spade in your inventory when you’re clue scrolling. It’s a small but meaningful quality-of-life benefit for anyone who does Treasure Trails regularly. The Bloodhound pet — which already existed in the game — also gains this digging ability with this update.

On top of that, fully grown dogs can be traded to an NPC near the Theatre of Blood for Blood Runes — 100 per dog, or 200 if you have the Morytania Medium Diary completed. So if you end up with extra breeds or decide you don’t need every dog in your menagerie, there’s a use for them beyond just looking good.

All 12 Dog Breeds in OSRS

Three breeds — the Labrador, Pug, and Spaniel — are available immediately after completing the quest. The remaining nine breeds are unlocked by finding lost dogs scattered across Gielinor and bringing them back to the Dog Shelter. It’s a clever way to get players exploring while building out their kennel. Here are all 12 breeds available at launch:

• Bernese
• Chihuahua
• Collie
• Corgi
• Greyhound
• Husky
• Labrador (available immediately after quest)
• Pug (available immediately after quest)
• Samoyed
• Spaniel (available immediately after quest)
• Shiba
• Yorkie

With 12 slots in the POH Menagerie and 12 breeds available, the math works out perfectly for completionists. One of every breed, housed in your own in-game kennel. Jagex clearly planned this intentionally, and it’s a satisfying bit of design.

The Polling Numbers Are Absurd

OSRS lives and dies by its polling system, and A Ruff Situation went through that system in August 2026 with some of the highest yes-vote percentages ever recorded. The quest itself passed with 89.5% yes votes. The addition of dogs as pets afterward received 88.4% yes votes. The threshold to pass a poll in OSRS is 70% — both of these weren’t just comfortable wins, they were blowouts. When 13 years of pent-up demand meets a well-designed implementation, that’s what happens.

Interestingly, the same poll cycle that approved dogs also shot down the Unbound Bronzeman game mode. Jagex had been developing an “Unbound” variant of the Bronzeman challenge that would weave PvP into the mix, but the community pushed back hard enough that the proposal was scrapped before it ever made it to a formal vote. This is exactly how the OSRS polling system is supposed to work — the community has genuine veto power, and they used it. The standard Bronzeman mode concept lives on as a future possibility, but Unbound is done.

The Charity Angle

In a genuinely sweet touch, Jagex partnered with Alveus Sanctuary for a charity stream to celebrate the launch of A Ruff Situation. Members of the OSRS development team went live on Twitch on September 11 to raise money for Alveus and the real-world animal care work they do. It fits the spirit of the update perfectly — the developers clearly enjoy this one, and tying it to an actual animal welfare charity makes the whole thing feel meaningful beyond just a game update.

Why Did It Take This Long?

It’s a fair question. Cats have been in OSRS since Gertrude’s Cat, a quest available from the game’s 2013 launch. Dogs exist in the game world too — the stray dogs in Varrock have been wandering around for over a decade, and Hellhounds are one of the most recognisable enemies in the game. So why no pet dogs until now?

There’s no official explanation from Jagex, but the likely answer is simply that the polling system requires community consensus, and the development team had other priorities. The infrastructure for companion pets (feeding, growth, menagerie storage) was already in place from cats, so once it was greenlit, the implementation was relatively clean. The bigger lift was probably designing 12 distinct breeds in OSRS’s famously chunky, low-polygon aesthetic while making them all look undeniably good. Based on community reaction, they pulled it off.

OSRS in 2026: Still Going Strong

A Ruff Situation is just the latest in what’s been a massive year for Old School RuneScape. The 2026 roadmap has already delivered the Grandmaster quest finale The Blood Moon Rises, the Wyrmscraig sailing island, and a new endgame raid. The game continues to grow and outpace its bigger sibling RS3 in player engagement, which is remarkable for a title built on a 2007 build of the original game. Its polling system, often imitated and never truly replicated elsewhere, remains the backbone of why the game’s community is so intensely invested. For more on how live-service games are keeping their communities engaged in 2026, check out our breakdown of what Final Fantasy XIV’s patch 7.56 added to keep FFXIV players coming back — a completely different approach to the same challenge.

For OSRS, A Ruff Situation is more than a quest. It closes a 13-year gap in what the game could offer its players, and it does so in the most OSRS way possible: through community polling, transparent development, and an update that has the whole community talking. Now if you’ll excuse everyone — there are lost dogs to find across Gielinor, and a menagerie that isn’t going to fill itself.