Ideas are cheap and easy (dog armors have been proposed since forever, and even implemented in XCF, although sprites are incompatible).
It's doing the work what counts, and selecting a good idea from a bad one. Congratulations on both fronts. Very good, and you also set up architecture for colored dogs, respect for going that extra mile.
Mod merged, thank you. This is a major step towards making dogs a full fledged race and removal of unnamed dogs.
If there are any brave souls for making colored dogs, it will be easy now for me to implement them