It's been three years since the release of Dreamworks' Mr. Peabody & Sherman, a movie that introduced us to the adventures of the anthropomorphic dog and his adopted son Sherman. The success of the movie has spawned a Netflix series, The Mr. Peabody & Sherman Show, a show which has kept the two characters on the cutting edge of pop culture. Regardless, there's one thing many of us have wondered about Mr. Peabody since he first graced television screens as part of The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. What kind of dog is Mr. Peabody exactly? So when I got to speak to director Rob Minkoff recently, I asked him what kind of dog Mr. Peabody is. His answer was thoughtful, and mostly tells us what we need to know.
I think he's a Beagle, but that's a good question. He's a Peabody dog. He's beagle-ish... He's an unusual mix. He's not a purebred by any means.
So, there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. Mr. Peabody is beagle-ish, with white fur and floppy ears. According to Rob Minkoff, he's definitely not a purebred pup; indeed, his glasses would probably preclude him from winning any AKC dog events, although we will say his signature red bowtie makes him quite a bit more dapper than your average dog. He's also quite a bit more intelligent, since we know that Mr. Peabody was a "puppy prodigy" and earned his degree from Harvard.
Speaking to Rob Minkoff ahead of The Lion King's recent Blu-ray re-release, the director and producer admitted that answering any specific questions about Mr. Peabody's breed is kind-of hard, because the dog was created before he appeared in the 2014 Mr. Peabody & Sherman. The Lion King producer Don Hahn, also chimed in, noting that Mr. Peabody origins are among the great dog mysteries in pop culture, somewhat like Goofy. But at the end of the day, he is beagle-ish, and that's what matters.
Of course, Mr. Peabody is far from the first dog to hit it big in popular culture. Lassie, a long-haired Collie, had an almost 600 episode TV run between the 50s and 70s, and Brian Griffin, a white Labrador, has had a pretty spectacular run on Family Guy since 1999, at least apart from those years it was cancelled. There's also Snoopy (a Beagle), Scooby-Doo (a Great Dane), Beethoven (a Saint Bernard), Toto (a terrier) and at least a dozen others. Mr. Peabody may not be quite as popular as some of those other canine stars, but in his own quirky way, he's carved out his own little patch of immortality, whether he's full Beagle or only beagle-ish.
Catch The Mr. Peabody & Sherman Show over at Netflix and be sure to see what else the streaming service has coming up with our Netflix premiere schedule.
