Before becoming one of the world’s most famous dogs, Snoopy was simply the pet that a teenager could not stop drawing. 🥹🐶 Spike joined Charles M. Schulz’s family in 1934, when the future creator of Peanuts was still a child, and quickly became one of his greatest inspirations.
Schulz was so fascinated by his dog that he began portraying him constantly. Spike had a very distinctive personality and, as Schulz would recall years later, was even capable of eating strange objects such as pins and thumbtacks. In 1937, when Schulz was still a teenager, one of his drawings of Spike appeared in Ripley’s Believe It or Not!. It was one of his first public steps as a cartoonist.
More than a decade later, Peanuts was born, and with it, Snoopy. Although the character would eventually develop a personality and appearance of his own, Schulz acknowledged that the dog from his childhood had been his main inspiration.
And he never forgot Spike. Years later, he even used his name for one of Snoopy’s brothers. ❤️ That child in the photo did not know it yet, but every time he sat down to draw his dog, he was taking the first steps toward the story that would change his life.