dog — A Command-Line DNS Client for Humans

What it is

dog is a modern DNS lookup command-line tool written in Rust. It prints results in color, supports DNS-over-TLS (DoT) and DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH), and outputs JSON for scripting. It is designed as a human-friendly alternative to the traditional dig command.

dog targets developers, network engineers, and system administrators who perform DNS lookups regularly. It provides the same information as dig but with cleaner output, better defaults, and modern protocol support.

How it saves time or tokens

dig's output is verbose and hard to parse visually. dog's colorized output makes it easy to spot the information you need at a glance. JSON output (--json) integrates directly with jq and other scripting tools without text parsing. DoH and DoT support means you can test secure DNS resolution without configuring system-level DNS settings.

How to use

1. Install dog:

brew install dog          # macOS
cargo install dog         # From source

1. Basic DNS lookups:

dog example.com                          # A record lookup
dog MX example.com                       # MX records
dog AAAA example.com                     # IPv6 records
dog TXT example.com                      # TXT records
dog NS example.com                       # Name servers

1. Advanced features:

# DNS-over-HTTPS via Cloudflare
dog A example.com --https @https://cloudflare-dns.com/dns-query

# DNS-over-TLS via Google
dog A example.com --tls @dns.google

# JSON output for scripting
dog A example.com --json | jq '.responses[].answers[].address'

# Specify a custom DNS server
dog A example.com @8.8.8.8

Example

# Check if a domain resolves correctly across different DNS providers
dog A mysite.com @8.8.8.8        # Google DNS
dog A mysite.com @1.1.1.1        # Cloudflare DNS
dog A mysite.com @9.9.9.9        # Quad9 DNS

# Verify DMARC and SPF records
dog TXT _dmarc.example.com
dog TXT example.com | grep spf

# Check CNAME chains
dog CNAME www.example.com

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This tool integrates with standard development workflows and requires minimal configuration to get started. It is available as open-source software with documentation and community support through the official repository. The project follows semantic versioning for stable releases.

For teams evaluating this tool, the key advantage is reducing manual work in repetitive tasks. The automation provided by the built-in features means less custom code to maintain and fewer integration points to manage. This translates directly to lower maintenance costs and faster iteration cycles.

Common pitfalls

• dog is no longer actively maintained (last release was 2021); the tool works well for basic DNS lookups but may not support the latest DNS record types.
• Some Linux distributions do not have dog in their package repositories; install from source via cargo or use prebuilt binaries.
• JSON output format differs from dig's output; scripts written for dig output will need adaptation.