Honestly, I’d never heard of the dog-butt-dragging thing before a couple of weeks ago, and now it seems to be showing up in more comics than pumpkin spice.
Even though it seems to be more common, or more noticed, in dogs, it does happen with cats too.
Judging from the color of the background, it may have BEGUN as a Pumpkin [PIE] Spice, the cartoonists couldn’t figure out what to do with it, and switched to a dog-dragging ‘joke’ (which is an EW for me . . . my dogs just don’t DO this, thankfully).
Is there a joke?
@ beckoningchasm – It’s simply the minor incongruity of having a World War I ace that is flying that low over the ground. They don’t usually do that, you see.
>Is there a joke?
Snoopy’s a dog. Wouldn’t it be funny if Snoopy did something that dogs do.
……
Actually, this could be funny if it played on the original idea that Peppermint Patty didn’t, for her first 20 years, know Snoopy was a dog and thought it was the kid with a big nose scooting.
“Honestly, I’d never heard of the dog-butt-dragging thing before a couple of weeks ago, and now it seems to be showing up in more comics than pumpkin spice.”
That’s how being made aware of things worked. I’d never heard of the Pumpkin Spice thing until last year and now it’s showing up more dog scooting.
(It’s pretty impressive you had never heard of scooting or ball licking though…. I can’t imagine being able to avoid it.)
“(It’s pretty impressive you had never heard of scooting or ball licking though…. I can’t imagine being able to avoid it.)”
Just Neuter Now!
woozy: It’s like how after I first heard about the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon I started hearing about it all the time.
“Snoopy’s a dog. Wouldn’t it be funny if Snoopy did something that dogs do.”
Some of us geezers remember when Snoopy was a dog and did doggy things.
@WW: LOL!
Winter, I want that on a t-shirt.
In the Shrek spinoff movie “Puss in Boots”, the title character faces off against a female before a mob of cats. She disrespects him by dragging her behind on the ground, which the other cats regard as the supreme putdown.
In the vintage Bob Clampett Loony Tune “An Itch in Time”, a dog desperately tries to ignore a flea’s bites lest hie get a bath. Unable to stand it any longer, he frantically drags his butt on the floor while yelping — but stops cold to tell the audience, “I better cut this out. I’m starting to like it!”
One of my father’s favorite chestnuts involved two guys seeing a dog licking his privates. “Gee, I’d like to do that,” says one guy. “I think you better pet him first,” says the other.
Woozy correctly notes that Peppermint Patty thought Snoopy was a funny-looking kid. I’m not sure she ever really got wise. A late story had her wanting to attend the Powder Puff Derby and hiring a pilot and his plane. She never questioned why the pilot was that funny-looking kid and they were sitting on top of a doghouse.
I have a rescue cat that used to do this, but he stopped after a few months of living inside.
MinorAnnoyance: Peppermint Patty did find out sometime in the 70s and it was a big thing, she was really mad at “Chuck” for not telling her, it was a big arc. Schulz even remembered that she knew for a while. But then, he got distracted, got old, and just reran familiar gags in the waning last days…
Though actually, I was surprised recently when going through the archive to find a specific thing, how long the comic stayed sharp and fresh, even after he gave up the 4 panel format. The specific thing I was looking for was a camp comic where Peppermint Patty was camp councilor, and she has a brave camper who dives head first into everything she’s presented with (“Here I go!” first for swimming, but then for more bizarre things, yet she still literally dives head first). I thought for sure this must be somewhere in the late 60s early 70s, where Peppermint Patty first met Marcie. Turns out what I was looking for was actually an arc from in the early 90s (94?). It was fresh and sharp, even though it was him literally reviving a setup from 20-25 years prior.
So yeah, Peppermint Patty eventually wised up, but then forgot about it…
Marcie gets feed up with her and shouts in her face “Sir, look at him! He’s not a kid! He’s a beagle!” and Peppermint Patty asks perplexed “A beagle?” and Snoopy, buried under a collapsed doghouse (? I think ?) and with his legs sticking up give a beleagured *speech* (not thought) balloon “*woof*”.
Then the angry at Charlie Brown strips. Then a month or two later, she’s on the phone with Charlie and says humorously reflectively “Yeah, … a beagle. I don’t know why I never noticed before… What a goof I was.” (or words to that effect).
……
Any way, wouldn’t this be funny if was “Hey Chuck. Your friend with the big nose is here rubbing his butt against my carpet. What is *with* this kid?”.
…….
Anyway the entire humor of PCST seems to be: in real life things do things. But in comics things don’t do those things because either its not funny or its crude or irrelevant; Therefore I, the PCST cartoonist, reach the conclusion that everyone else in the comic’s audience, don’t really realize the thing is actually a thing. It’d be funny if I pointed out that they actually *are* the thing by making them do the things a thing does. Ha Ha!”
Had you de-wormed and/or de-flea-ed it?
I’m certain I remember the topic of dogs scooting has come up here before, but not certain enough to actually try to figure out when.
Re: “An Itch In Time” — that gag was meant to be sacrificial (that’s one of the reasons it’s so quick and sudden — so it could be cut cleanly). When the animators had a gag they wanted to keep in (such as the scooting one in this cartoon), they’d put other, more questionable gags around it for the Hayes Code guys to go after, as distractions. This one got missed.
Ah, that reminds me of a story — about the word ‘gunsel’, which has come to mean a mob “soldier” who carries a gun. But supposedly it was part of a censorship-throwaway incident of the kind James Redekop mentions.
I ran across this anecdote in an earlier source, and I think it didn’t quite spell out the “kept boy” meaning, instead just saying “a catamite”. Which was also unknown to me, so I looked it up; and found just “a ganymede”.
Comics I Don't Understand 
Yep, “scooting”.
https://pets.webmd.com/dogs/dog-dragging-bottom
Even though it seems to be more common, or more noticed, in dogs, it does happen with cats too.
Judging from the color of the background, it may have BEGUN as a Pumpkin [PIE] Spice, the cartoonists couldn’t figure out what to do with it, and switched to a dog-dragging ‘joke’ (which is an EW for me . . . my dogs just don’t DO this, thankfully).
Is there a joke?
@ beckoningchasm – It’s simply the minor incongruity of having a World War I ace that is flying that low over the ground. They don’t usually do that, you see.
>Is there a joke?
Snoopy’s a dog. Wouldn’t it be funny if Snoopy did something that dogs do.
……
Actually, this could be funny if it played on the original idea that Peppermint Patty didn’t, for her first 20 years, know Snoopy was a dog and thought it was the kid with a big nose scooting.
“Honestly, I’d never heard of the dog-butt-dragging thing before a couple of weeks ago, and now it seems to be showing up in more comics than pumpkin spice.”
That’s how being made aware of things worked. I’d never heard of the Pumpkin Spice thing until last year and now it’s showing up more dog scooting.
(It’s pretty impressive you had never heard of scooting or ball licking though…. I can’t imagine being able to avoid it.)
“(It’s pretty impressive you had never heard of scooting or ball licking though…. I can’t imagine being able to avoid it.)”
Just Neuter Now!
woozy: It’s like how after I first heard about the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon I started hearing about it all the time.
“Snoopy’s a dog. Wouldn’t it be funny if Snoopy did something that dogs do.”
Some of us geezers remember when Snoopy was a dog and did doggy things.
@WW: LOL!
Winter, I want that on a t-shirt.
In the Shrek spinoff movie “Puss in Boots”, the title character faces off against a female before a mob of cats. She disrespects him by dragging her behind on the ground, which the other cats regard as the supreme putdown.
In the vintage Bob Clampett Loony Tune “An Itch in Time”, a dog desperately tries to ignore a flea’s bites lest hie get a bath. Unable to stand it any longer, he frantically drags his butt on the floor while yelping — but stops cold to tell the audience, “I better cut this out. I’m starting to like it!”
One of my father’s favorite chestnuts involved two guys seeing a dog licking his privates. “Gee, I’d like to do that,” says one guy. “I think you better pet him first,” says the other.
Woozy correctly notes that Peppermint Patty thought Snoopy was a funny-looking kid. I’m not sure she ever really got wise. A late story had her wanting to attend the Powder Puff Derby and hiring a pilot and his plane. She never questioned why the pilot was that funny-looking kid and they were sitting on top of a doghouse.
I have a rescue cat that used to do this, but he stopped after a few months of living inside.
MinorAnnoyance: Peppermint Patty did find out sometime in the 70s and it was a big thing, she was really mad at “Chuck” for not telling her, it was a big arc. Schulz even remembered that she knew for a while. But then, he got distracted, got old, and just reran familiar gags in the waning last days…
Though actually, I was surprised recently when going through the archive to find a specific thing, how long the comic stayed sharp and fresh, even after he gave up the 4 panel format. The specific thing I was looking for was a camp comic where Peppermint Patty was camp councilor, and she has a brave camper who dives head first into everything she’s presented with (“Here I go!” first for swimming, but then for more bizarre things, yet she still literally dives head first). I thought for sure this must be somewhere in the late 60s early 70s, where Peppermint Patty first met Marcie. Turns out what I was looking for was actually an arc from in the early 90s (94?). It was fresh and sharp, even though it was him literally reviving a setup from 20-25 years prior.
So yeah, Peppermint Patty eventually wised up, but then forgot about it…
Marcie gets feed up with her and shouts in her face “Sir, look at him! He’s not a kid! He’s a beagle!” and Peppermint Patty asks perplexed “A beagle?” and Snoopy, buried under a collapsed doghouse (? I think ?) and with his legs sticking up give a beleagured *speech* (not thought) balloon “*woof*”.
Then the angry at Charlie Brown strips. Then a month or two later, she’s on the phone with Charlie and says humorously reflectively “Yeah, … a beagle. I don’t know why I never noticed before… What a goof I was.” (or words to that effect).
……
Any way, wouldn’t this be funny if was “Hey Chuck. Your friend with the big nose is here rubbing his butt against my carpet. What is *with* this kid?”.
…….
Anyway the entire humor of PCST seems to be: in real life things do things. But in comics things don’t do those things because either its not funny or its crude or irrelevant; Therefore I, the PCST cartoonist, reach the conclusion that everyone else in the comic’s audience, don’t really realize the thing is actually a thing. It’d be funny if I pointed out that they actually *are* the thing by making them do the things a thing does. Ha Ha!”
Had you de-wormed and/or de-flea-ed it?
I’m certain I remember the topic of dogs scooting has come up here before, but not certain enough to actually try to figure out when.
https://godaddyandthesquirrelmustbothdie.wordpress.com/2019/09/23/another-not-really-synchronicity-but-it-might-seem-like-it-to-us/
Re: “An Itch In Time” — that gag was meant to be sacrificial (that’s one of the reasons it’s so quick and sudden — so it could be cut cleanly). When the animators had a gag they wanted to keep in (such as the scooting one in this cartoon), they’d put other, more questionable gags around it for the Hayes Code guys to go after, as distractions. This one got missed.
Ah, that reminds me of a story — about the word ‘gunsel’, which has come to mean a mob “soldier” who carries a gun. But supposedly it was part of a censorship-throwaway incident of the kind James Redekop mentions.
An account is here at: http://www.worldwidewords.org/topicalwords/tw-gun1.htm
I ran across this anecdote in an earlier source, and I think it didn’t quite spell out the “kept boy” meaning, instead just saying “a catamite”. Which was also unknown to me, so I looked it up; and found just “a ganymede”.