ODIE’S FIRST APPEARANCE

Jon’s pet dog (originally owned by Jon’s friend Lyman). Odie is a yellow, long-eared beagle who is always drooling and walks on all four legs. He is very unintelligent and naïve (although he has been shown on rare occasions to be the exact opposite). His birthday is on August 8th and is celebrated once in a strip where Jon says that Garfield didn’t care about Odie’s birthday. Because of his naiveté, Garfield likes to play tricks on him, particularly taking advantage to give him the boot—quite literally—when he is standing on the edge of a table.

Odie is the only animal character who doesn’t communicate with any form of dialogue (except in one comic where Odie actually speaks in Garfield’s dream, once when he tries coffee and says “Rowr...” and another when he sings on a fence “Lady of Spain, I adore you” and another one, the June 15, 1980 comic where he’s poking his original owner, Lyman, and saying he’s hungry[9]), solely communicating with body language and his enthusiastic barking and other dog sound effects.