Rez dog is an informal term for outdoor, stray, and feral dogs living on Indian reservation

Indian reservation

An American Indian reservation is an area of land managed by a Native American tribe under the United States Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs...

s in the United States and Canada. The term has taken on many connotations, and has to some extent become an emblem of and metaphor for reservations, reservation life, and Native Americans in general. For example, a "rez dog" may refer to a Native American resident of a reservation.

The distinction between a reservation dog and American dogs in general is often seen as emblematic as the difference between Native American

Indigenous peoples of the Americas

The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...

 and majority culture way of life. Untended dogs roaming Indian reservations and other rural Indian communities cause problems that the communities must deal with. They are generally thought of as mixed-breed and unsupervised.

In commerce and literature

A clothing company, "rez dog clothing", has adopted the persona of reservation dogs.

The narrator of two chapters of Antelope Wife, by novelist Louise Erdrich

Louise Erdrich

Karen Louise Erdrich, known as Louise Erdrich, is an author of novels, poetry, and children's books featuring Native American heritage. She is widely acclaimed as one of the most significant writers of the second wave of what critic Kenneth Lincoln has called the Native American Renaissance...

, is described as being part Ojibwe reservation dog, part Lakota dog, and part Coyote.