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Snoopy is a famous comic-strip/cartoon character.

Snoopy

Snoopy is a black and white beagle who is best friends with a little yellow bird by the name of Woodstock. Snoopy is the pet dog of Charlie Brown, a child who can get pushed around by the other characters at times. Snoopy is very popular with his different aliases like The WWII pilot, Joe Cool etc. Snoopy was one of the first characters to appear in the Peanuts comic strip, though he was shown as a normal dog (though he was actually a puppy at the time). But later on in the comic-strip he was able to walk on his two feet instead of like a normal dog who walks on all fours. He is one of the most famous fictianol cartoon character ever created and has many fans.

alsoSnoopy is a major character in the Peanuts comic strip by Charles M. Schulz. He is the pet beagle of Charlie Brown (his best friend) who cares for him. Snoopy is blessed with a rich, Walter Mitty-like fantasy life.

In most of the Peanuts movies and television series and specials, Snoopy is voiced by Bill Melendez. Andy Beall voiced Snoopy in Happiness Is a Warm Blanket, Charlie Brown, following Melendez's death in 2008. Recordings of Melendez were used to create Snoopy's voice in The Peanuts Movie.

Along with Charlie Brown, Snoopy is the only other character to appear in every movie and special.

Personality[]

Snoopy is loyal, funny, imaginative and good-natured. He is also a genuinely happy dog. A running gag within the strip is that he does a "happy dance", which annoys Lucy because she believes that nobody can ever be that happy. However, Snoopy just thinks Lucy is jealous because she is not capable of being as happy as he is. The only thing that truly upsets him is a lack of supper. Snoopy, being a dog, has a strong hatred of cats, often making rude remarks to the cat next door (Who usually attacks him and destroys his doghouse) and in one series of strips writes stories for a magazine which just points out that cats are stupider than, and inferior to, dogs. However, Snoopy has on occasions tried to be nice to the cat next door, but their relationship always remains antagonistic.

Snoopy loves root beer and pizza, hates coconut candy and listening to balloons being squeezed, gets claustrophobia (which keeps him out of tall weeds and even his own doghouse), and is deathly afraid of icicles dangling over his doghouse. One of his hobbies is reading Leo Tolstoy's epic novel War and Peace at the rate of "a word a day". Snoopy also has the uncanny ability to play fetch with soap bubbles and can hear someone eating marshmallows or cookies at a distance, or even peeling a banana. He claims to hear chocolate chip cookies calling him. Snoopy is also capable of disappearing, like the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland, as shown in a series of strips ("Grins are easy. Noses are hard. Ears are almost impossible.").

Snoopy also loves sleeping and being lazy - a trait which often annoys Frieda. Snoopy often lies on top of his doghouse and sleeps, sometimes all day long. In one strip, Charlie Brown refers to him as a "hunting dog", because he always hunts for the easy way out of life.

In later strips, Snoopy's main human contact (when not indulging in his fantasy life) is with Rerun van Pelt.

File:Snoopy and Rerun.jpg

Rerun van Pelt and Snoopy

Younger than the other children, Rerun deals with his loneliness and lack of owning a dog by persistently asking to borrow Snoopy from Charlie Brown. Snoopy alternates between refusing to leave the house and agreeing to play with Rerun on his own terms (such as having Rerun push him on a stroller or pull him on a sled). While he also shows genuine affection for Rerun, Snoopy sometimes reacts indignantly to being treated as a common dog. In one strip, Rerun calls him a "puppy dog" while playing with a stick. After seeing Snoopy drop the stick off a cliff, he declares, "I am not a puppy dog."

Background[]

Snoopy first appeared in the October 4, 1950 strip, two days after the strip began. Schulz originally planned to call him "Sniffy", but found out that name was used in a different comic strip. He then changed the dog's name to Snoopy. The name first appeared on November 10, 1950.

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Peanuts comic strip from February 2, 1951. This displays the earlier look for Snoopy as well as the ambiguous status of his ownership: he appears to be a neighborhood dog with no particular place to be as his home.

In the early days, it was unclear who was the owner of Snoopy. It was not necessarily Charlie Brown. For instance, in the strip from February 2, 1951, Charlie Brown yells at Snoopy for following him, until Patty tells him that Snoopy is not following him, but simply lives in the same direction. Other early strips show Snoopy on a leash with Shermy or Patty, and not Charlie Brown. However, other early strips show Snoopy in Charlie Brown's room at night, as he is going to sleep. It seems that in the early days of the strip, Snoopy was an ownerless dog who played with the various children. As the years went by, Snoopy began to interact with Charlie Brown more often than the other children. It is eventually shown that Snoopy's doghouse is in Charlie Brown's backyard, and Charlie Brown is responsible for feeding him. It is eventually confirmed that Charlie Brown is the owner when he says that his parents bought Snoopy for him when he was upset after a boy dumped a bucket of sand on him in a sandbox.

Snoopy has some little bird friends, the most loyal of which is Woodstock. Snoopy also has seven siblings, Spike, Belle, Marbles, Olaf, Andy, and two others named in the special Snoopy's Reunion as Molly and Rover. The eight puppies were born at the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm before being separated. Snoopy has recalled his family going to the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm's chapel every day, and being part of a fifty-beagle choir. He also taught Sunday school there, a fact Charlie Brown sometimes forgets. He went to school at the Ace Obedience School.

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Linus tells Charlie Brown about Snoopy's first owner Lila in the strip from August 30, 1968.

According to a series of comic strips from August 1968 and the movie, Snoopy Come Home, at an early age, Snoopy was taken in by a girl named Lila, but when she was unable to keep him, he was returned to the farm, where Charlie Brown picked him up. This fact came to light when Lila was in the hospital and wrote to Snoopy, asking him to come and visit her. Linus did some research and learned of this, sharing his information with Charlie Brown when Snoopy returned.

Snoopy appears to like Charlie Brown. Once when Charlie Brown came home from camp, Snoopy made a welcome home banner and was waiting outside Charlie Brown's house with cake. However, the banner said, "Welcome home, Round-headed Kid." Snoopy often refers to Charlie Brown as "the Round-Headed Kid" not out of spite, but simply because he could not remember his name.

In 1951, Snoopy's birthday was celebrated on August 28. However, in 1968, his birthday was celebrated on August 10.

On April 14, 1993, Charlie Brown explains the reason Snoopy doesn't go into his doghouse is because of his claustrophobia.

Development[]

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The first appearance of Snoopy in the Peanuts comic strip from October 4, 1950. This is another instance of the old Snoopy look as well as a time when he had no internal monologue or complex motivations but served as a gag character.

In the very early years of Peanuts, Snoopy behaved much like an average, everyday pet. Gradually, however, he became more like a human than a dog. Snoopy was a silent character during the first two years of the strip, but he eventually verbalized his thoughts to readers for the first time (in a thought balloon) on May 27, 1952.

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