"O cachorro é meu."

Translation: The dog is mine.

[alguemmisterioso]

Can someone please explain why "The puppy is mine" does not work and it must be dog?

Dicionário Priberam (de Portugal): "Cachorro: cão com menos de seis meses; cão jovem"
Dicionário Michaelis (do Brasil): "Cachorro: Cão novo ou pequeno"

A small, young, recently-born, or less-than-six-month-old dog is, by definition in English, a puppy or a whelp. So... "O cachorro é meu" ought to mean "The puppy/whelp is mine"

[drmel94]

Reported 27 Dec 2017. "Puppy" has been accepted as a translation for every other sentence I've come across here using "cachorro". I realize it's used to mean dogs more broadly in Brazilian Portuguese, but I see it more akin to referring to an adult dog as a "pup" in English, and not a complete substitute for "cão".

[lalalapokadots]

If I wanted to imply my dog is a female, would I say, "a cachorra é minha?" would that be correct?

[sylvietr]

"O menino é meu." -Brandi/Monica

[TorBen9]

I listened 10 times and couldn't understand the word 'meu'. Did anybody else have this problem?

[zenolee]

That's my dog is more colloquial than "the dog is mine"

[tykob]

agreed. that should be an accepted response as well

[IAmCrazyHope]

But we havent learned the word for 'that' yet so we cant translate it into 'that's my dog'.

[katkalo]

Why would this not be minho?

[Davu]

Maybe you have seen "minha" which means "my/mine" for feminine things; although it sounds logical to change the 'a' to an 'o' to get the word for "my/mine" for masculine things, it doesn't work. The correct word is "meu".