Dogs

The narrator of The Rats in the Walls mentions the trite figure of "the inevitable dog in the ghost story, which always growls before his master sees the sheeted figure" [HPL Rats (online text)]. However, there are abundant examples that dogs also hate and fear alien races and transdimensional elder entities.

All the dogs of the countryside around Dunwich barked persistently, throughout the night before Wilbur Whateley's birth on Candlemas, 1913. Dogs hated Whateley, who had to carry a pistol to protect himself against them. Later, dogs came to hate and fear the whole Whateley place, presumably because of the growing size of Wilbur's hidden half-brother. The Miskatonic University watchdog showed an immediate tendency to attack Wilbur, and later succeeded in attacking and killing him. Yet following Wilbur's death, the dog fled, apparently fearing the liberated soul of Whateley, which also panicked the waiting whippoorwills. The night that Wilbur's half-brother broke loose, the dogs near Dunwich barked frantically all night. The next day, three dogs that accompanied the search party barked furiously but became cowed and reluctant when near Cold Spring Glen, where the horror had passed. Similarly, dogs awakened various farm families when the horror drew near, but then cowered in fright during the actual attacks. During the ritual performed by the Arkham professors to banish the horror, the frantic barking of dogs was again heard. [Dunwich (online text)]

Outside Henry Akeley's house, dogs barked at the Outer Ones and apparently kept them at bay during the night [Whisperer (online text)]. It seems bizarre that the Outer Ones lacked the technology to overcome ordinary domestic dogs, but perhaps they weren't really planning to approach any more closely anyway.

Dogs show an intinctive hostility to the crinoid Old Ones (1) of Antarctica [Mountains (online text)], their acrid scent, and their soapstone stars.

In the land of dream, among the fertile plains rolling down to the River Skai, all the dogs barked affrightedly at the inconspicuous Zoogs that were following Randolph Carter [Kadath (online text)].

After the eldritch meteorite buried itself in the ground beside Nahum Gardner's place, the Gardner dogs came to seem cowed and quivering every morning, nearly without the spirit to bark. Later, the dogs vanished one night, and were presumed to have ran away. The remains of one dog were later found in the well at Gardner's place. Hunters cannot depend on their dogs too near the greyish dust left by the blight from the meteorite. [Colour (online text)]

The sorcerer Asenath Waite could make any dog howl by certain motions of her right hand [Doorstep (online text)].

Sometimes the absence of dogs is suspicious. Thus, the town of Innsmouth was marked by a complete absence of cats and dogs. When the creatures of Innsmouth set out in pursuit of the Shadow Over Innsmouth narrator, they used no dogs for tracking. [Innsmouth (online text)] Similarly, no dogs were allowed in Rogers' Museum [Museum (online text)]. Perhaps they would have reacted badly to the preserved specimens of alien creatures.

In contrast with the above examples, there was a fearsome, gigantic winged hound that pursued and killed St. John [The Hound (online text)].

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