“Pueblo Pluto”

When was the puppy in this dubbed Ronnie? Your guess is as good as mine. He doesn’t have a page on the Disney wiki I sometimes use. A quick search for him online provides little useful information. He was in several other Disney cartoons, generally with Pluto, but he’s one of the many recurring characters from the shorts who is long-forgotten. D23.com says he’s a Saint Bernard puppy who first appeared in “The Purloined Pup” in 1946, and maybe that’s where he gets a name, but that’s all the article says and it’s sandwiched between articles for Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion and Ronto Wrappers.

Mickey, firmly in his Bing Crosby era, is taking Pluto on a vacation through the Southwest. They stop at a souvenir stand. Mickey throws Pluto a buffalo bone and goes inside to shop, leaving Pluto with a bone he hasn’t paid for, unattended. Ronnie, who in this short is I guess a stray, is hungry and tries to steal Pluto’s bone. Pluto isn’t having it. Hijinks ensue.

It’s odd to me how many cartoons have dogs fully eating bones. I’m not even a dog person and I know that isn’t accurate. Traditionally, dogs have been given bones to get the scraps of meat off them. A bare, dry bone isn’t terribly appealing to a dog. Maybe if they can crack it open and get the marrow, but it’s not like a dog is going to look at a bone with no meat on it and think, “Yes, that’s worth a lot of fuss.” Somehow, dog plus bone is shorthand, and I wonder how many pet owners think that’s real because of an entire life of being exposed to this sort of thing.

Toward the end of the short, Mickey asks Pluto if he’s gotten any souvenirs, and that’s such a weird question. I know it’s intended to set up the final gag, but what exactly kind of souvenirs is Mickey expecting his dog to have acquired? How? One assumes that Mickey paid inside for the bone he cavalierly tossed to Pluto at the beginning of the short, but does he expect Pluto to do a bit of light shoplifting? Is Pluto supposed to dig for artifacts or something? Maybe just find a shiny rock of some sort and, I don’t know, carry it in his mouth?

This is one of those shorts where you think, “Yeah, one of the animators went on vacation and had an idea.” And no shade—ideas for art come from all kinds of places, and it could be much worse. But it very much feels as though someone at Disney—perhaps the uncredited Nick George—took a trip through Arizona or New Mexico and thought, “Pluto could do things here.” It’s not a short that is huge in the public consciousness, but it’s a fun one nonetheless, if you don’t think too much about it. Unfortunately, “think too much about it” is kind of what we do here.