It isn’t a mere coincidence that these canines have very different characteristics. It’s all part of Disney’s plan.
Disney fans have grown accustomed to Mickey Mouse and the gang raising some puzzling questions. I know I’ve always wondered why Mickey wears pants, while Donald Duck sports a shirt. What’s with Mickey’s gloves? And, why does Donald talk the way he does? While these are all valid questions, one of the most hotly debated queries focuses on the franchise’s most beloved canines — Pluto and Goofy.
For decades, we have been trying to solve the burning question: How can Pluto and Goofy be members of the same species when their appearance and behaviors are completely different? It turns out that there may be an answer.
Way back in 1930, the dog who would later become Pluto made his first cinematic appearance in The Chain Gang, a short film featuring Mickey in prison — yes, it appears that America’s favorite mouse has a criminal past. When Mickey makes an attempt to escape, he is hotly pursued by a dog that very closely resembles his future pet. According to Animated Talk Studio, this was the first time that a Disney dog was shown acting like an everyday canine, walking on all fours and barking. And audiences loved it. As a result, this very same dog would later appear as “Rover” in The Picnic and, finally, morph into Mickey’s faithful friend “Pluto” in The Moose Hunt. An iconic animated character was born.
Okay, so that explains how Pluto’s canine characteristics first appeared, but this leaves me with another question. Why has Pluto never evolved, adopting Goofy’s ability to walk and talk and wear clothing? Heck, Goofy can even play baseball. So, why is Pluto limited to mere fetch?
I know there has to be a logical reason, right? What if Goofy isn’t an ordinary dog in the first place? After all, anything is possible in the wonderful world of Mickey Mouse. In an interview with Yahoo Entertainment, Bill Farmer (Goofy’s voice actor since 1987) explains,
“Pluto is a dog, but Goofy seems to be in the canine family in the same way that a wolf is not a dog, but they also are in the canine family. I think Canis Goofus is the technical Latin term for what Goofy is. He’s just Goofy.”
Perhaps, as a “special” type of canine, we can more readily accept Goofy’s apparent otherness. There is, however, another possibility. Disney Go contends that Goofy was created to be one of Mickey’s human-like friends. Pluto, on the other hand, is Mickey’s pet. Let’s face it. If Pluto could tell Mickey to get his own darn slippers, it just wouldn’t be the same.
If only the other questions were this easy to solve.
