Are Minecraft wolves truly wolves or wild dogs? There is a simple mod that will provide a hint on how to answer that question. And it may also make you care about your dogs just a little bit more.

Let Sleeping Dogs Die is a mod for Minecraft that adds a new pose for dogs. After sitting around for too long, they will lie down. When their owner gets close to them, they will sit up again. Functionally this is a small change that has no real effect on gameplay, except… I have found by using this mod that I care more about the dogs in my Minecraft life.

The mod actually adds a couple of sound effects as well. The first is a sad whine when they decide to lie down. The second is an excited panting when they sit back up. The effect of this is that you feel the dog is sad when you leave, lying down out of depression. And you sense the dogs happiness when you return.

It made me feel more emotionally invested into the dogs that I tamed in the game. When I saw one of my dogs laying down and sad in the rain, I couldn’t help but stop what I was doing to build it a dog kennel.

The mod is client-side only so you can use it on servers that don’t have the mod installed. However, it may be incompatible with other mods that change wolves, so you won’t be able to use it on every server or in every modpack.