The Dog House: kennels, paw prints and wilds that stick

Wooden fences, a bright suburban garden and a row of dogs with a lot of personality. The Dog House became one of Pragmatic Play's best-known slots thanks to a simple idea done well. The Dog House demo gives you 1,000 virtual credits, so you can try it without an account or download.

The basics: five reels and twenty lines

The layout is a classic five by three with twenty fixed paylines, paying left to right. Card values and dog accessories, a collar and a bone, make up the lower symbols; the different dogs pay more. The kennel is the wild and lands only on the three middle reels. Each wild carries a multiplier, two or three, and when more than one wild is part of the same win, their multipliers are multiplied together. A single line with two wilds can pay several times its normal value.

Free spins with sticky wilds

Three paw print scatters trigger the free spins. Once the round is under way, every wild that lands sticks in place until the bonus ends, keeping its multiplier. A wild that lands early on a middle reel will feed every line that passes through it for the rest of the round, so the first few spins often decide how the bonus goes.

What to watch in your free play

• Play 200 spins or more: the bonus is not frequent, and the base game is fairly quiet between wild hits.
• Note how often two wilds land together in the base game and what their combined multiplier does to the payout.
• In the free spins, keep track of how many wilds are stuck by the midpoint.

The Dog House slot has since inspired several sequels with new mechanics, but the original remains the cleanest version of the sticky-wild idea. Play The Dog House free on desktop or mobile, then try it for real money at the casinos below.