Him being a dog instead of human really hindered his potential/involvement in EQG.  
Big time.
 
Sadly in fanfics too..

@Background Pony  
i love spike too and this does not seem like ‘degrading’ to me.

@Background Pony  
Correction: Not many people did. I’m one of those who’s always loved Spike.

@shittwat  
no one ever gave a shit about spike’s character before this.

@Background Pony  
Spike being a dog is degrading to his character. Spike is like a little brother or son to Twilight, not a pet.

@Background Pony  
No, he won’t. This is bad and you should feel bad.

Ehh Spike deserves it in my opinion. Maybe he’ll even be more interesting this way. At least he’s cute.

Hell has a new character.

:’( god damn it

Yeah that just plain out sucks.

The leaked sketches were, indeed, sketches. Old versions.
 
The new image has them in the same outfits but with awful cheekmarks and derpy wings.

@Itsthinking  
That screenshot was not fake, just outdated. The characters’ outfits were almost identical to the ones on the official image, which means whoever drew that image was likely part of the production.
 
This image of Spike does not match the art style of the official image released a week ago, but it does match the art style of the earlier image, which means that this may be an outdated concept image from around the same time. That would mean that the concept would likely still be getting used even if the design undergoes changes to match the up-to-date art style.
 
So basically, this image might be fake, but everyone said the same thing about the first Equestria Girls image, and it turned out that it wasn’t fake, and that the designs had gotten even worse. The sad thing is that turning Spike into a dog is so dumb that it sounds just like something Hasbro would do.

Maybe he still can talk or breath fire, but only we notice it.
 
FIM is still being aired regardless, so my guess is that it will try to be its own show instead. Nick’s TMNT and TFprime are pretty good, so why give up on something we love?

THINGS WE KNOW:  
The Equestria Girls humanized-pony thing is completely legit, but the leaked sketches EqD posted were not. The actual artstyle is, in my personal opinion, even worse.
 
The Spike-dog pic does not look like the artstyle shown in the NYT article, which means that this pic specifically is likely fake. BUT… that doesn’t mean the concept itself is fake.
 
Spike is MLP’s legacy character (seriously, he’s what ties all the generations together). However, he’s never been anything but a dragon, so I have no idea if he’d show up in EqG.

>using meme arrows

its probably fake, nothing has being saud or confirmed about it

I’m not angry about this. But considering how they turned the mane 6 into pony/human hybrids, I find pretty fucking stupid turning Spike into just a dog instead of a dragon/human hybrid.

@Background Pony
 
I dunno, Ika-musume had the idea that getting the same treatment a dog was a good deal too, but she realized that it might not be the case as soon as she got a collared…

Thanks for proving yourself to be a duck yet again, Gummy.
 
It’s not like we didn’t know already.
 
V
 
@Itsthinking
 
@Itsthinking  
^
 
READ THIS.

@LanceOmikron  
It’s not a full show as far as we know. It’s just a 66 minute TV movie. That’s all Top Draw said they made.

I’m staying neutral until I actually see the show itself
 
Though assuming this little detail is true, it’s gonna be really darn hard to keep up the neutrality. I’ll still be neutral, but it’ll just be a test of patience.
 
(I mean really, they couldn’t have spike be Twilight’s younger brother…?)

I think he doesn’t have it that bad, he will get to sleep and play all day and Twilight will even have to pick his poop!

@Itsthinking  
Thank you!

@Itsthinking
 
Rumors and facts are the same thing here at FOX…..Derpibooru!

@Background Pony  
The only people that told us it was a high school show were the ones who also gave us fake development screenshots.