Great game, but quite a few flaws that leave the feeling of something missing.
It starts off with you as a "dog trainer wannabe" as I'd call it. You first enter the kennel, and find that you have a few options. You can look at the kennel's personal dogs, which are the three types that the North American versions are named after (Chihuaha, Labrador, and Dashund which is the one I have). Once you've gotten to know how to interact with your dogs, how to pet them and call them and such, you can enter the kennel and buy a new puppy. At the beginning of the game, you can only afford one dog. Pick your favorite, I love beagles, and I'm sure the one laying right next to me in his cute little sleep position does too (Note: Real Dog, not nintendog. Remember this, for in the future you may forget which is which).
You take the dog home and must first have the dog warm up to you and get used to its surroundings. You call it to yourself, pet it for a while, and eventually it becomes comfortable. This is one of the things I don't get, when you pet your dog enough, sparkles appear around it. This happens constantly throughout the game, especially when tossing frisbees in the park. What these sparkles do is beyond me, maybe they increase your trainer points.
As soon as your dog is comfortable enough, you can name it and teach it its first trick, Sit. This first time you do a trick is automated by the game, but future dogs you buy do not have the option of automatic learning how to sit.
The game progresses with you taking your pet on walks, feeding it, practicing frisbees or agility trial courses, visitng the two shops, and playing with other dogs in the park. You can enter them in contests, dress them up in the accessories you find, and basically interact with them as you would a real dog.
The flaws become apparent as you begin to play for a while. Playing for long spans of time is unreasonable, since you are limited to entering each dog in 3 contests a day (they take maybe 5-10 minutes each), walking it every half hour, and having it grow tired of playing with you often. Also, the game becomes repetitive at points. During the contests, you are forced to listen to the same boring conversations over and over, and you can't skip over them. They should have put more than two people as "commentators", since after the third time of the exact same conversation, you begin to feel as if the opening scenes for contests go on forever.
Also, since the dogs cannot age, reproduce, or die, the game will become pretty boring after your dog has cleared the contests. You can re-do the contests as much as you want, but the only reward is more money, which is helpful but not satisfying after beating the agility championship for the 100th time. It would have been more fun if we had been able to add a little more realism to the game.
My last big complaint is how the "Bark Mode" was executed. Now, I admit it was a pretty cool idea, but with the lack of people to actually interact with, it seems mundane at best. I haven't encountered a single other trainer in my area in my entire time playing. What would have been better would be for this to have been a game with the new wireless internet abilities. There would have to be limitations on how many people you could meet a day, but many activites could have been designed around this system, you could compete against other trainers in contests, have multiple dog play sessions, and maybe even have your dog "visit" their house as sort of a puppy playdate. But allas, maybe in Nintendogs 2.
Now let me highlight some good points of this game. The graphics are insanely good. Better than the N64 by a longshot, you will have actual emotions connected to these dogs just from the graphics alone, if not from how they act in their environments and to you. You can't resist three little puppies (two beagles, Arwen and Casy, and a dashund, Lilah, on my team) sitting there and looking at you, waiting to bark at your next stroke of the keyboard. I felt real guilt when I didn't play for a while, because I was "neglecting" them and not feeding /walking/bathing them. It's all in the eyes for me, they captured that look that Hershey (yes, the beagle) gives me when he wants me to pet him.
The music is also pretty good. It hasn't gotten too repetitive for me, and the option of collecting albums is a nice idea, though it would be nice if you could set the albums so that they play as a default instead of you having to activate them each time you turn the game on, or go for a walk or etc. The white disk I don't know what to do with, so don't expect a great message if you ever encounter me.
All in all, while this game is by no means perfect or worth a 10/10, it is a good buy. It's worth the money, most definitely. For kids who are allergic to dogs or whose parents won't allow them one, it's probably the closest I've ever seen to getting a real experience. If you love animals, and that apartment in the city is just a little too crowded for a real labrador, the labrador on your DS will have no trouble fitting into your happy family. I give this game my approval, and if you haven't bought into the hype surrounding it, you will not be let down by this buy. Don't spend 1000+ dollars on a real dog that will ruin your carpet and wake up the neighbors. Get a Nintendog today.