I'm experimenting with making a little dog marionette type puppet. 
I guess he's technically a marionette since he's on strings but it's VERY simple. 
He'll have a string on his head, and bottom.  Maybe one on the nose to make his head turn and look up.  He doesn't have a very big role so I don't want to spend a ton of time on details.  He needs to run in, chase a firefly and that's about it.




He will be made out of this fur which is actually black light reactive, in fact I took this pic with my phone under black light.

I used scraps to practice on.



Playing around with nose ideas.

He has a moving mouth so that he can be used as a puppet also, but for now it is clipped shut.

He actually is smaller than what I wanted so I will make it again bigger.But since I just used scrap foam and scrap fabric no loss! I always count these as learning experiences and that is priceless to me actually.

Sweet!  I like the nose. It fits the one in your drawing. The stringing of a dog doesn't really have to be that complicated.  Drop bars for head, shoulders and but allows you to tie of his leg strings to the top static bar so he can run using one hand.  If you want to get the alternate movement on his legs then one set can be strung so they cross. I would suggest the back legs for this. If you want you can make the front leg bar detachable which allows him to set up and beg if you want. I would suggest putting in the nose string. You can get a lot out of just this one string.   What I describe may sound complicated but it really isn't.

looking good!

This is the second doggie.  He's a bit bigger than the first one.  Everything is pinned on at this point.

Shawn, I will try to figure out the stringing you explained. I'll let you know how it turns out!

very cute, I like the birds too. What sort of production are you going to use it in? (obviously  black light as you  mentioned that... but what is the type of event?)

So cute!

Thanks!

pagestep - We do a black light show at our church every year during Halloween.  Our church hosts an outreach event called "Trunk-n-Treat" where the kids go from car to car for candy, then we have them come in the gym and we put on our show twice that night.  It's lots of fun and we get to reach a lot of people that wouldn't normally go to church.

The birds are from last year's show, and they need some repair.  We maybe not repair per say but I want to redo the strings. I used fishing line to go down the back to the trigger and it's stretched out from use. 

Adorable!

Cute doggie, like the big tougue hanging out.  I want to come see, it sounds like so much fun. 

Awesome work. They look great and I bet fun building them.