Snoopy is a cartoon dog in the long-running comic strip Peanuts, by Charles M. Schulz. He is Charlie Brown’s pet dog. Snoopy began his life in the strip as a fairly conventional dog, but eventually evolved into one of the strip’s most dynamic characters and one of the most recognizable comic characters in the world.

The original drawings of Snoopy were inspired by Spike, one of Schulz’s childhood dogs. Snoopy, whose fictional birthday has been established as October 2, made his first appearance in the strip of October 4, 1950, two days after the strip premiered. He was first identified by name on November 10. Schulz was originally going to call him “Sniffy” (as described in the 25th anniversary book), until he discovered that name was used in a different comic strip. He changed it to “Snoopy” after remembering that his late mother Dena Schulz had commented that if their family were ever to acquire a third dog, it should be called Snoopy, an affectionate term in Norwegian (the actual term is “Snuppe”). There is an earlier reference to Snoopy’s birthday which places the date as August 28 rather than August 10th; it can be seen in a cartoon strip dated August 28, 1951 where Charlie Brown and Violet are singing Happy Birthday to Snoopy and presenting him with a cake (The Complete Peanuts 1950-1954).

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