Yay scott!!!
I knew you'd be good for something sooner or later :). Now we just have to keep you from deleting source and everything will be great.
I definitely think the samoyed rivals the penguin for coolness and quirkyness.
Smaller? yes, but maybe two different dog-head-to-text porportions, one for smaller buttons where the text would be too horribly small and one for the larger logos such as on this site and in the /docs directory on distributions.
And when you're going for the whole buttons/graphics suite, maybe screw around with the body or the big white fluffy tail.
