Attack Animal/Playing With

Basic Trope: A creature who attacks on your behalf as a Weapon of Choice.
 * Straight: Alice fights by sicking her dog on her foes.
 * Exaggerated:
 * Everyone fights each other by sending trained animals, robots or some other creature which obeys their commands after them.
 * Mon fighting
 * Downplayed: Alice has the power to call animals to her aid, but usually fights with more conventional weapons.
 * Justified: Alice isn't a trained fighter or very strong, but her dog's loyal and perfectly capable of tackling her foes.
 * Inverted: Alice has to escort her dog to safety.
 * Subverted: Alice sicks her dog on Bob...but since it wasn't trained as an attack dog he just sits there.
 * Double Subverted: Bob sneers and attacks Alice, which causes her dog to leap to his master's defence.
 * Parodied: Alice looks completly defenceless until she snaps her fingers to call in her Big Badass Wolf.
 * Deconstructed: Bob calls out Alice for making her pet fight her battles for her.
 * Reconstructed: Alice points out that dogs are simply wolves which have been bred to get along with humans; she's not making it do anything that it wouldn't do on instinct.
 * Zig Zagged: Sometimes Alice has her dog attack, other times it simply runs away when a fight breaks out.
 * Averted: Alice just uses a gun.
 * Enforced: The show's creators wanted to include the dog as a Series Mascot and needed a way to make sure it didn't look like he was there just to sell toys.
 * Lampshaded: "Uh-oh...nice doggy...?"
 * Invoked: Alice trains her dog as an attack dog so she can use him as a concealed weapon (since being accompanied by a dog wouldn't be very unusual).
 * Defied: Using animals or any other semi-intelligent creature as a weapon is strictly forbidden by animal rights laws. The few people who try it end up having to deal with Animal Wrongs Groups.
 * Discussed: "Is she armed?" "She has a fully loaded dog pointed at us."
 * Conversed: "Maybe I should just train something to do the fighting for me...?"
 * Played For Laughs: Alice's dog frequently ignores her commands or gets distracted by sticks and balls thrown by enemies.
 * Played For Drama: Alice's beloved pet is slowly becoming more violent and bloodthirsty. Can she protect herself without letting her dog become a monster?

OK, Attack Animal; Stay! ...there's a good Pothole. Yes you are!