Michigan Dogman
An upright, dog-headed creature of Michigan folklore, made famous by an April Fools' Day song on a Traverse City radio station in 1987.
Meaning
On 1 April 1987 WTCM-FM in Traverse City played "The Legend", a spoken-word song by Steve Cook, one of its staff, about a doglike creature that walks upright like a man. It was an April Fools' joke, and the song claims a century of sightings in Michigan (Cadillac News; HuffPost). Later that day the station began getting calls from people who said they had seen one (HuffPost).
Was the dogman made up for the song?
Cook has said he had never heard of anything called the dogman before he wrote it. By 2012 he had received about 500 reports of encounters (HuffPost), and the song has raised thousands of dollars for animal rescue charities (WWMT).
Read next
- Next in Cryptids and folklore creaturesBeast of Bray RoadA wolf-like creature said to walk on two legs near Elkhorn, Wisconsin, first written up in a local weekly in December 1991.
- In Animal symbolismDog symbolismIn the Odyssey the dog is the faithful one: Odysseus's old hound Argos knows him after twenty years away. In the British folklore John Brand collected, a dog howling at night near a sick person foretold a death, and Cherokee storytellers say the Milky Way is the trail of meal a dog spilled as it ran.
See also
Kraken, Sea serpent, Loch Ness Monster, Champ (Lake Champlain monster), Bigfoot (Sasquatch), Yeti (Abominable Snowman).
Sources
- How the Dogman 'Legend' was born (Cadillac News), Cadillac News, Cadillac News
- Michigan Dogman, Mysterious Upright Canine Creature, Haunts State's Backwoods (HuffPost), HuffPost Detroit, HuffPost
- MICHIGAN MONSTERS: Dogman legend continues to howl across state (WWMT), WWMT News Channel 3, Kalamazoo, WWMT
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from curves and waves.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed September 28, 2026. How we research
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