Besides having fur, four legs, and a longing for the taste of flesh that hopefully isn't yours, where would you see similarities between a bear and a dog? It's pretty subjective. For instance, one of the dogs listed by the folks over at Rover is the Chow-Chow, which For the Love of Dogster says looks like a lion and which we say looks like Cowardly Lion (Chow-ardly Lion?) from the Wizard of Oz. Both sites also list the Leonberger as resembling a bear or lion respectively. Then there's the question of which kind of bear.
Rover compares the snowy-coated Samoyed to a polar bear puppy. Meanwhile, For the Love of Dogster lists the Tibetan Mastiff as looking like a lion and Rover doesn't mention it at all, we actually think it bears a fairly strong resemblance to a specific kind of bear, specifically the Asiatic black bear. At least when you look at it from a certain angle with certain lighting and a certain fur color. That might sound like an awful lot of prerequisites, but our eyes are just more demanding. This is important stuff, after all.
The International Association for Bear Research and Management describes the Asiatic black bear as boasting a "light-ish muzzle" and a striking, sometimes V-shaped white patch on its chest. Now look at the above side-by-side of the bear and a Tibetan mastiff. Like looking at a funhouse mirror image, right?
