Dog With a Bone Coloring Page

About this coloring page

A dog sitting with its tongue out, a collar round its neck and a bone in front of it. Dogs are the subject most children arrive with an opinion about, usually because they know one, and that opinion is worth asking for before they start: what color is your dog, or the one next door. A child coloring a specific dog works differently from one filling a generic shape. The body, head and ears are separated, so a patched or spotted dog happens without any planning and without needing a steady hand. The collar is a narrow band that takes one bright color and finishes the picture, and the bone is the small reward at the end. Printed at A4 the dog fills most of the sheet with a clean margin, and on ordinary copier paper crayon, pencil and felt tip all behave. If a child wants to add spots, doing them after the base color rather than leaving gaps is far easier and looks better. A dog coloring sheet prints small without losing its outlines, so two fit on a page if you need a stack rather than one picture.

Color suggestions

• Golden brown with a cream chest
• Black and white patches
• Red collar
• White bone, grey shadow

Did you know?

• A dog's nose print is as individually distinctive as a human fingerprint, with its own pattern of ridges and creases, and some kennel clubs have used nose prints for identification.
• Dogs smell in a way that has no human equivalent: they can move each nostril independently and work out which side a scent arrived from, which is how a tracking dog knows which way a trail runs.