Sourdog

Sourdog is a premium plant in Plants vs. Zombies 2 who was introduced in 5.8.3, who costs 100 gems. Sourdog launches thorns at Zombies who are far away, but stops shooting when there's a zombie only one tile away from him in any direction. When bitten by a zombie, his sour flavor causes zombies to eat him slower while he slowly pricks the zombie to death - however after two waves, Sourdog's sour flavor is gone meaning zombies will eat him at the normal speed. After 15 bites, Sourdog is eaten, but after 10 bites Sourdog will have half of his thorns fall off, which does not affect the damage he deals to zombies.

Origins
Sourdog's name is based off of two plants - the Ribes cynosbati 's name of Dogberry and the fact that early pickings of the Gooseberry are generally sour. The attacks are also based off how the Dogberry is prickly and, again, the fact that early pickings of the Gooseberry are generally sour.

Almanac Entry
Sun Cost: 175 Damage: Moderate (ranged), Normal (melee) Range: Straight (ranged), Tile (melee) Recharge: Mediocre

''Sourdog dislikes when other plants say he's "too prickly to like" because of his reaction to the reason he didn't get to go to Cattail's party. He finds him chasing cats is an offensive stereotype.''

Strategies
(If you would like your plant to be in a strategy along with Sourdog, feel free to add it!)

When combined with Thyme Warp in Neon Mixtape Tour, the effects of the reversing will turn Sourdog back to being sour if two waves have passed. This makes Sourdog more useful in cases like Greatest Hits as Thyme Warp will allow it to stay sour the entire time and Wall-nut First Aid will allow the player to keep healing it.

Sourdog can also be combined with an Endurian while a zombie is eating it, as the Zombie will take damage from the Endurian and from Sourdog which can deal a good stream of damage combined with the previous strategy - however you'd have to dig up the Endurian each time or else the zombie would eat the Endurian destroying it.

Trivia

 * When early in development, Sourdog was originally going to be called Sourgoose and the melee damage would have been Light, and it wouldn't have lost the sour flavor.
 * In a tweet that Popcap released a week before 5.8.3 came out, it shows a Punk Jam Punk Zombie switching lanes after encountering Sourdog, but this was removed for an unknown reason.
 * The page's formatting is based off of the page for Parsnip.