Of course you do! You see her almost every day...if you've been using a Macintosh before 2003.

• Whenever you bring up the "Page Setup..." dialogue for an Apple printer such as a StyleWriter or LaserWriter, she dances according to your settings... Not with MacOS X, but in all MacOS from 5.0 to 9.2.2 (Classic).
• When you mount a disk image with DiskCopy, she is the spinning cursor (Classic).
• When developpers get some Apple DTS sample Code, she can be found often as the Application icon
• She was the star of some of the first QuickTime movies realized in Apple QuickTime Labs

Clarus' story is shrouded in mystery.

She first appears in 1984, in the design of Susan Kare's Cairo font. At that time, she had not been named Clarus nor was she recognised as a DogCow. Susan Kare was employed by Apple to design most elements of the user interface for the first release of MacOS. The Cairo font included a little dog (z glyph) with a brilliant future ahead of it... Cairo font was the first "dingbats" font in computer history, but it has now disappeared completely from MacOS (have been distributed until MacOS 7.1).

Susan Kare also created many other legendary images for MacOS: the MacPaint icon, some well known Finder icons such as the trash/wastebasket, the folder and the "Happy Mac", and several of the original Macintosh fonts (Chicago, New York, Cairo, Los Angeles and San Francisco). More about Susan Kare and the Cairo font in MacOS can be at Folklore a site dedicated to Mac inside creation history :

• Susan Kare biography at Folklore

Later the printing developer team (DTS) at Apple (with Scott Zimmerman) was looking for an image to show, in a very simple way, the different printing options. Someone suggested the small dog (z) from Susan's Cairo font.

The DTS team adopted her and used her to graphically show the printing options (Portrait/Landscape, Invert, Flip Horizontal, Flip Vertical and Precision Alignment) in LaserWriter 4.0. Since then, she's been used in all of Apple's printing software... until MacOS X.

At that time (1986), she was redesigned (enlarged to fit the space left) and assumed her standard look,

Then she start it's sucessfull story...

On October 15th 1987, the animal's species was first identified as a Dogcow, and she first cried "Moof!" to the world under the direction of Mark Harlan and Scott Zimmerman. Then Mark Harlan appropriated her image for his internal mail.

Others claim that the word "Dogcow" was first uttered by Ginger Jernigan during an internal meeting at Apple.

Whatever the case may be, the Dogcow made her first public appearance during the 1988 WWDC (WorldWide Developer Conference) on badges worn at the "Debugging Labs" sessions. CEO John Sculley also wore this badge during his keynote speech.

The DTS team used the Dogcow in their internal mail and made several different "Moof!" badges, stickers, bags and mouse pads. All these articles were made in small numbers and not distributed outside Apple.

To see those items, browse "Apple : Clarus items" section.

In April 1989 Mark Harlan, with the help of Mark Johnson, wrote TechNote 31 as an April Fools' Day joke for Apple's developer community. It clarified certain matters regarding the Dogcow. Mark also revealed her real name: Clarus (a private joke about an internal Apple project named Claris that was terribly late at that time).

By now, Clarus was known outside of Apple labs and it seems that even Microsoft used her in an advertisement! Later Microsoft also used her in PowerPoint.

The TechNote #31, distributed to developers in the monthly bulletin, turned the Dogcow into a real celebrity. Later it was included on the developer CD "Dave and Phil's Excellent CD". Since then, TechNote 31 has been excised and replaced with a more mundane one on "GestaltWaitNextEvent" fonction.

An incomprehensible phrase can be found as a sub-heading in the original note: "Aanal, Enacku Naiimadu, Kaanali!". Many people have tried to decipher this, but without success. Several years later, Mark Harlan solved the mystery, when he explained it was simply a phonetic transciption of the phrase "But I can't see the Dogcow !" in the Tamil dialect, which Sriram Subramanian had said to Mark over the phone. And, as the note goes on to explain ; Arabic systems don't include Clarus in their printer drivers - they get a horse instead!

From this time, Clarus also began to be used in the icon for unfinished applications on Developer CDs. Later, Clarus became a spinning cursor in the DiskCopy 6 application. She was also the involuntary heroine of Timothy Carroll's MoofWars - a demonstration program showing how to use the DrawSprockets library. Clarus still appears regularly in TechNotes.

Discover all its appearance in Apple labs, browse "Apple : Pictures" section.

Clarus enter reality (1993)

In 1993, Apple and Cupertino township installed 2D sculptures, representing celebrated icons from original MacOS, in the garden of Apple Campus (Cupertino CA). The original Dogcow from Cairo font designed by Susan Kare was here...

For more details about the garden, browse "Real World : Apple Campus Garden".

Clarus disappear ? (1998-2004)

The sculptures were removed from the garden in 1998, officially to be restored. They never reappear.
But rumours abound and some suggest the "old iconography" is not in accordance with the new "Think Different" campaign.
Others explain that it's part of Microsoft's secret plan with Apple - Bill Gates was jealous of Clarus and invest $100 millions in Apple to remove Clarus from the garden.

You can still make a virtual trip to the garden and look at the sculptures - visit "Jory's Garden Adventure" a nice guided tour on the Apple Campus.

Clarus could also be found on Apple's web site, on the index page for Developers' TechNotes, but unfortunally she was removed in July 1999.

By 1999, Apple also kept the official Clarus web page : "Nest of the Dogcattle" (a page maintain by Brian Bechtel that keep original Clarus material created in Apple). It includes the original TechNote #31, the story of the Dogcow by Mark Harlan and useful links.
In 2004, Apple redesign (again) the developer section of www.apple.com. "A Nest of Dogcattle" disappear somewhere in february. The last know URL doesn't exist anymore and Apple search engine give very few entry for Clarus, DogCow or Moof!...
See "Nest of the Dogcattle" (archive from 2002).

In 2000, Apple released it's next generation OS : MacOS X.
But Clarus has disappeared from the print set-up dialog ! She hase been relaced by a boring grey guy.

Apple also removed Original TechNotes and Develop articles (You'll find copy below).

In TechNote #31, Mark Harlan talks about another DogCow : Moofo. The question of other Dogcow has been long debate inside Apple DTS. We know many representations of Dogcow in and outside Apple.

Also remember that due to it's 2D nature, a Dogcow is very hard to be seen in our 3D world; if she stand on edge to the viewer, she's invisible !

In Apple developer lab, she appears as icons, as pictures, as cursors, but also on badges, stickers, t-shirt... She was present during QuickTime and QuickTime VR beggining. She also appears in Apple Campus Garden as a sculpture.

Clarus also has some kind of clones who escaped from Apple labs and that can be found in html pages all around the web. There are still a number of mysteries surrounding this amazing animal...