Poodle Doodles

Sometime in 1972, I started doodling images of my wife's dog, Missy. She was a pedigree poodle which grew to about the size of Labrador, forgetting she was supposed to be a miniature. Per her papers, her full name was Michelle Francois Duboise - thus "Missy."

It wasn't long before my doodles turned into a "strip" and on and off for several years I was drawing them in a sketch book. The image above left was drawn on the inside cover of the sketch book. You can see the smudges and yellowing from the passage of time as it sat untouched in the bottom of a dresser drawer for twenty some odd years.

Thanks to a Father's Day gift from my daughter and son-in-law, I recently replaced our original printer with an HP "all-in-one" (printer-copier-scanner) desk jet. I will now be able to begin to fulfill my desire to scan and post some of my own original artwork.

From the sketch book I selected five of the strips to post here today. (To read the text and to better view the cartoons, you will need to click on the images to enlarge them.)
ICED TEA
DUCK!
EASY RIDER
PLAY BALL!
SHOO FLY
I realized after I began scanning that the sketch book is wider than the glass surface of the scanner which resulted in portions chopped off of the cartoons. I will have to allow an inch margin in future drawings, or to use a narrower sketch pad.

What do you think? Should POODLE DOODLES become a regular feature here at "It Occurred To Me?" Of course, if I were to resurrect the strip, I would have to find the time and incentive to start drawing again. However, if I posted two cartoons a week, I have enough to cover 52 weeks - a whole year.

Missy was poisoned by some weed-killer sprayed along his side of our fence by a neighbor. She suffered a slow death and gave up the spirit a month later. For obvious reasons it was then that I stopped drawing the strip.

I have thought about drawing the strip again as there have been plenty of pets, dogs and cats, to come along since. Perhaps by sharing them here, I'll use more and more of my own original art instead of "pilfered" Internet images to enhance this site.

The cartoon strip "Poodle Doodles" and the images of the same are my personal work and are sentimental to our family. Please do not copy or display it anywhere else without my expressed written permission. Thank you.

No.1384