Precious Puppy

Is it two-ply? Is it durable? Is it absorbent? *Who cares?* It's got cute widdle puppies!

"Everyone loved a puppy!"

—GTA Radio

Throw puppies at a problem and the problem may not disappear, but who cares? There will be puppies!

—Okamiden review

A work is not about dogs, but throws them in anyway.

The reason is usually that dogs are cool, and puppies are also cute. You just want to love them, pet them, just cuddle up to them, and let them lick the frown off your face. For this reason, puppies and other forms of dogs are likely to show up in fiction, just because they make everything better. Heck, there's a reason Pet the Dog and Kick the Dog have "dog" in the name, since doing nice or bad things to them sets such a strong tone for the character doing those.

That means that examples aren't just "There's a dog", and especially not "It's about a dog". It has to be a having a dog in a show just because of this trope.

A common schtick for guys to attract girls in fiction on TV: borrow or rent a puppy so the girls will come coo over it and admire the guy for his sensitivity.

Compare Cute Kitten, Cunning Like a Fox, Fun Size, Canis Major, Big Friendly Dog, Canine Companion, and note that one person's precious little pup is another's Mister Muffykins. If the puppies distract from another situation, then a Cuteness Proximity situation has occured.

Not to be confused with any of the Tropey the Wonder Dog tropes, or the "puppies" on women.

Gratuitous use of canines in shows include:

Advertising

Shown above: The puppy for Andrex toilet tissue in the UK. Sold in the U.S. as Kleenex Cottonelle.
- YMMV with the new CGI puppies.
Marketing research has shown that putting a puppy or a baby into an advertisement, no matter how arbitrarily, boosts sales. Hence the toilet paper.
Mexican-based phone company Telmex ran many television ads in Mexico, Peru and Colombia featuring a talking Jack Russel Terrier called Otto. The dog is so popular that even people who dislike Telmex wind up liking the dog.

Anime and Manga

Excel Saga has Menchi (AKA Mince), the token animal sidekick who doubles as the heroes' "emergency food supply."
Gaomon in Digimon Savers, who was squeed over by both Chika and Relena.
Arf of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha has the puppy form she takes during the events of A's. Zafira is eventually convinced to take one too at the end of the season and immediately learns of its hazards when a group of squeeing schoolgirls smothers him in the third Sound Stage.
Potato in AIR. Picco-picco!
Black Hayate from Fullmetal Alchemist.

Roy Mustang: Dog, huh? I LOVE DOGS!

- The best part is why he likes them - dogs are loyal even if you mistreat them and don't ask for paychecks.

Comic Books

In Elf Quest, Ember gets her first bond wolf, Choplicker, who is still a cub and he is lupine cuteness personified.

Film

The 1984 version of Dune gave Paul a dog as a pet, despite no mention of one in the book.
The adorable puppy that just appears in one scene in The Third Man.
Milo from The Mask.
In Krull, Inept Mage Ergo off-handedly mentions wishes. Titch, a boy coming along with them, mentions he always wanted a puppy. Later on, Ergo wanders away from the rest for a while, turning himself into a puppy and running along to Titch, remaining that way for a few scenes to make him happy. B'aww.
In Bridesmaids, puppies are given out as bridal shower favors.

Literature

Biscuit, the little yellow puppy.
The Clifford the Big Red Dog Spinoff Babies series, Clifford's Puppy Days, which is basically based on the spinoff books series (yes, the books came first).
In Death Gate Cycle, the hero gets a dog as a pet out of nowhere. The dog is actually a manifest part of his consciousness, but the fact that it became a dog fits this trope.
Harry spends the entirety of one of the Dresden Files novels carrying a puppy around in his coat pocket. In subsequent books said puppy grows up into a Big, Friendly Heroic Dog, but he doesn't really have much impact on the plot in that book aside from causing random female characters to suffer from Cuteness Proximity. But who cares? Harry's carrying a puppy in the pocket of his bulletproof black leather duster, which is just so damn cute it almost ceases to be hilarious.
Spot the Dog.

Live Action TV

The Puppy Bowl.
In Top Gear where Hammond did an experiment regarding which was a better "girl magnet", a flashy sports car or a retriever puppy (named Killer). The puppy won by a mile. All who approached fell under the spell of the Cuteness Proximity and didn't even notice the car.
A hilarious episode of Dinosaurs had all TV shows getting dumbed down, resulting in one show called "Box Full Of Puppies."
- In another episode, Earl is forced to run for office (it sort of makes sense), and at one point, he just says he loves puppies as part of a ploy to win votes (it works).
An episode of The Monkees features a cute, puppy-filled romp sequence to the group's silly song "Gonna Buy Me a Dog."
In an episode of MythBusters, Grant had to be extremely relaxed and happy for a test and one of the things that was given to him was a bunch of puppies (to his obvious delight).
On Mystery Science Theater 3000, the bigger and meaner the on-screen dog, the more likely Crow and/or Tom are to exclaim "Puppy!"
- In the Werewolf episode, Bobo's attempt at making a werewolf ends in failure when he brings in a cocker spaniel instead of a wolf. He ends up cooing over the dog; this is expected since the dog is Kevin Murphy (Bobo)'s dog
On Classic Concentration, Marjorie Goodson-Cutt's chihuahua Pokey would often show up on display with her owner during prize discriptions, much to the amusement/annoyance of host Alex Trebeck.
The "Palate Cleanser" segment of Web Soup, which comes after the Nightmare Fuel / Nausea Fuel of "Things You Can't Un-See", is all about making things better for the traumatized viewer; not coincidentally quite a few of the cutesy web videos that have been featured there feature puppies being adorable.
In Community episode "Cooperative Calligraphy", has a puppy parade.

Dean Pelton: Attention, students! The puppy parade is starting on the quad! Better come quick--with every passing moment, these puppies grow older and less deserving of our attention.

Retriever puppies were brought onto the set of A Bit of Fry and Laurie on two occasions. They both went like this:

Fry/Laurie: We have one last, very special guest for you to meet and her/his name is Snipper/Dodger. (Enter puppy.)
The entire studio audience: Ooaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

Star Trek: Voyager. In "The Q and the Grey", Q is trying to sweet-talk Captain Janeway into an Interspecies Romance. Janeway, who left her own dog back on Earth, is surprised and delighted to suddenly find a puppy dog in her quarters. She goes all goey for a second before toughening up.

Janeway: This isn't going to work, Q.
Q: (materialising) How can you ignore that face? (Gives Janeway his best Puppy Dog Eyes)
Janeway: He's adorable. But this has to stop.
Q: Please accept him as a small token of my affection.
Janeway: No.

Professional Wrestling

An episode of WWE Smack Down, during the Chyna / Eddie Guerrero angle, had Eddie do something that had Chyna about to dump him - until he gave her a puppy.
- There was also Al Snow's brief run with having a chihuahua named Pepper as his, um, companion object. He gave Pepper to Jim Ross, who was doing commentary, while he went to do his match. Jim Ross held the dog, noticed that he was scared of the crowds, and got legitimately angrier (for the dog's sake) as the match went on, mostly neglecting the commentary. Pepper would only make one other appearance on live TV.
- The Big Show once tried to give The Undertaker a peace offering, by giving him a wooden crate with a puppy inside. Right on cue, the entire audience (not very far removed from the Attitude Era, mind you) broke out in an "Awwwwwwww", all in unison.

Toys

The Liv toy doll line has all the girls paired up with a puppy that learns tricks to match the interest of the girl it's paired with.
LeapFrog's Scout and Violet.

Video Games

In Tales of Symphonia, one of the little miniquests involves Colette attempting to name every stray dog in the game.
- Which only makes her literal Kick the Dog moment when she's brainwashed after the Disc One Final Dungeon that much more horrifying.
Live Powerful Pro Baseball, Japanese baseball game series, especially the handheld versions, have a brown cute puppy appear almost in every menus, even in some story modes.
Chibiterasu in Okamiden is the game's, scion of the mighty goddess of the sun that slew the personification of evil in the original Okami. Also a wolf puppy. Even the other characters succumb to Cuteness Proximity.
The title character's family in Opoona have 8 puppies, which help in the tutorial, as well as needing to be located for a sidequest.
Growlithe, Houndour, Poochyena, and Lillipup in Pokémon.

Web Comics

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal combined this with Heart Is an Awesome Power and Chest Burster. See here.
Freefall: Florence Ambrose is a very important cast member. Her child photo, however...Who´s the cuty wolfy yoty puppy? You are! Yes you are!! Eeeaaaars!!!
Cyanide & Happiness makes them... somewhat less precious.
In The Adventures of Shan Shan, when Shan Shan blames Backpack for his Eating Lunch Alone, Backpack invokes this trope to refute it, even though, since no one else can hear Backpack, he makes Shan Shan look crazy.

Web Original

The Nostalgia Chick shouts "Puppies!" as a Running Gag. She also has her own puppy who appears in review. In the show its named Mignion, and in real life it's named Kali.
The Shiba Inu Puppy Cam
On YouTube, there's a video of high school kids performing "Give Us Your Money" from Avenue Q. When Nicky tries to think of something that he could get for Rod as a peace offering, he says "I know! I'll get him a puppy!" Guess the PTA wasn't crazy about Rod getting a boyfriend.
YouTube personality Tobuscus has a video clip series called "Cute Win Fail". Needless to say, the "Cute" segment (and occasionally "Win") has a disproportionately high number of dogs doing absurdly cute things, with babies and cats as the other favorites.
The Spoony One now has a spotted puppy named Oreo. She's energetic and often shows up in vlogs wanting to play.
This is why Francis, a grey French Poodle, is the "host" for the YouTube cooking show Cooking With Dog.

Western Animation

An episode of Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes has a brief bit where Johnny brings a dog into the lab. Reed warns Johnny that he won't save the Torch from Sue's wrath. But Sue's only reaction is to squeal and go "Puppy!"
Blue, Magenta, and Green Puppy (all of them female) in Blue's Clues.
Dora's puppy, Perrito (Spanish for "puppy") makes things so much more precious that Swiper won't swipe a gift once he learns that it's for Perrito.
Shifty Dingo from Blinky Bill, sometimes to the point of being Tastes Like Diabetes.
While neither the 1980s or the 2010 version of Pound Puppies count by the definition of the trope, the adopted puppies within the shows do.

Real Life

Police dogs. Police departments recognized this trope and, instead of training them only to be vicious and apprehend resistive suspects as they did in the past, now train them to do that and roll over for a belly rub at community events and liaisons to help less intimidating to children.
- And to pretty much anyone else.
This Cracked article explains it all.