Many great ideas, but Nintendo forgot to make a game.
Gameplay: You won't ever touch the buttons while playing this game. Everything is done with the stylus. You also use the microphone just as much, and in very innovative ways. When you first pick your dog from a group of different pups, you name it. Literally. You tell it it's name. Just by saying it. When your dog learns it's name, you simply call it, just like a real dog. You can use the stylus to "play" with your dog. Pet it, throw a frisbee or a tennis ball, etc. Most of your time will be spent playing with your dog, taking it on walks, feeding it, bathing it, and even going to the park to play. To go for a walk, you simply trace a path with the (You guessed it.) stylus. The more wals you go on, the longer walks you can take. You can go to the park on walks, go to the bargain store, and even meet other dogs. Walks are cool, but you can only take one every 30 minutes. The whole game goes in real time. This isn't a good thing. With the short list of things to do, you have to wait way too long before you can really do anything again. You can teach your dogs tricks, such as sitting, lying down, spinning, etc. This was the best part of the game for me. You teach your dogs tricks by making it do certain actions with the stylus. For instance, pull your dogs butt down, and it sits. Do this 3 times, telling the dog the name of the trick each time he does it. Eventually he will learn the trick, and all you need to do is say the name of the trick and bang, your pooch does the trick. There are a ton of different tricks to teach your dog, but once again they constrain how many tricks you can teach your dog. You can teach them 14 in total, but only 3 per day. As in every 24 hours. You can also enter constests, such as frisbee contests, obstacle course, and trial. Frisbee is self explanatory. Obstacle course is where you guide your dog through an obstacle course. Nothing particularly exciting. Trial is where you have to make your dog do certain tricks. It will tell you which trick to do, and sometimes lets you freestyle. At the end, you will get rated by three judges on a scale of 1-10. These competitions are really easy if you try. Especially frisbee ones. All you have to do is go to the park and practice. You dig will become a master in no time. You earn money buy doing good in contests. You can use money to buy a multitude of things, such as food, shampoo, new toys, new room designs, and other random things. You can have more than 1 dog, but then everything becomes a pain in the ass. You can't focus on 1 dog, so teaching it anything becomes impossible. You can only enter 3 contests, so once again, you are limited. There is a multi-player mode called bark mode. This is really interesting, seeing how your dog associates with another. Eventually, your dog and someone elses will become friends. It's actually pretty cool, but gets old fast.
Graphics: The graphics are great. The dog models are especially nice, looking very realistic with great, fluid animations. Everything animates well, and everything looks great. The enviroments when you go on walks look good, but don't have many details. There aren't very many other graphical things, but whats there looks great.
Sound: There really isn't much sound. Your dog barks, and not much else. There aren't any voices for the judges, who usually comment on your performences. There are cars in the backround when you go for walks, but it is just the same pattern of car sounds over and over. Certain toys make sounds, but not much else. Theres back round music, but it isn't anything worth noting. You get sound boxes, which are boxes that play music. But you can't do anything while you listen to them, making them pointless. There is very little sound, and whats there isn't good.
Value: There are the aforementioned contests, but nothing else. All the restrictions they put on the things you can do really hurt the value, and there just isn't much to do in general. It quickly gets boring, and you can see everything there is to see in one play. That isn't good. Bark mode helps, but really not much. There isn't enough here for a purchase.
Overall: Nintendo seemed focus on making a demo to capitalize on the unique features of the DS instead of making a game. There are some really good ideas here, but not nearly enough of anything else.