one last one: dog in heraldry

Some 19th century scholarship on the dog in that coat of arms you're devising

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The dog, beside symbolically representing vigilance and fidelity, implies, says Nisbet, that the bearer was "noble, and possessed the right of hunting.". . .

The Talbot, a dog of scent (probably a species of the mastiff), is often found in armorial bearings. Guillim says, "There is scarcely a virtue incident to man but there are singular sparks or resemblances of the same in the sundry kinds of dogs; in which the English mastiff hath highest praise, insomuch that historians report, that the Romans took mastiffs from hence, to carry in their armies instead of soldiers." The mastiff or talbot is an emblem of peculiar fidelity. . .

. . . Other species of hounds are employed as heraldic insignia, but none are so prevalent in armory as dogs of scent.

. . .From William Newton, A Display of Heraldry (London: William Pickering, 1846), pps. 94-95. A bit on the Talbot here from bloodhoundclub.co.uk,