Dogs/hounds

[The Shade]

Yes, definatly. I'm sure it said in the book.....

[rachel25]

Yeah I think it might have been Bellmaker

[Leatho Shellhound]

It zayz on ze Redwall Viki zat zey vere tvo female Ermine.

A Ermine is just another name for stoat.

[HeadInAnotherGalaxy]

It zayz on ze Redwall Viki zat zey vere tvo female Ermine.

A Ermine is just another name for stoat.

Zae zen a Ztoat iz juzt anozer name for an Ermine?

[The Shade]

Yes.

[Shadowed One]

I thought an ermine was a kind of stoat.

[Tam and Martin]

I thought an ermine was a kind of stoat.

They are.

[CrazyPug37]

I doubt there were dogs in the Mossflower region, just like horses and chickens, even though Brian Jacques mentions all three animals in the Redwall series one time or another.

[The Shade]

Agreed.

[General Ironbeak]

Yup, a lot of ideas come to me late at night.  xD

The closest is Urgan Nagru, when he found a dead olf.

How did Nagru know that wolf's name, though, if it was dead when he found it?

[Gonff the Mousethief]

I bet he made it up

[General Ironbeak]

Sounds plausible, considering it was his spelled backwards...a little too much of a coinky-dink...but only Jacques knew for sure

[Kitsune]

Personally, I think that there were probably wolves (due to their closeness to foxes and their mention in the Bellmaker) and they could have been called "hounds". In the southern sections of the U.S.A., some people call ferrets or skunks (or stoats or weasels, I can't remember) "pole-cats". A pole-cat appears in Mattimeo, which is odd because Brian could have just called it a ferret etc. Maybe he was trying to show the creature's ethnicity, or he could have been saying that where the creature lived was supposed to be the place where it is called that particular name. I think that in England dogs are more referred to as hounds than in the U.S., but that's just a guess.

[Starla1431]

^ But, polecats are real animals. They are related to stouts and skunks and the like. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_polecat.

I've imagined that the first Redwall as being a time where dogs and some other animals have existed, but had become extincted as time went on. Or they just live in other places.

[Sable]

I've always thought that a really interesting fanfic idea would be an external threat to Mossflower/Salamandastron from a wolf pack or something. It could force an alliance between vermin and woodlanders and be an instance for a different type of Redwall story.