What Kind of Dog Is Snoopy?

Snoopy from the famous Peanuts comic strip is a beagle.

Snoopy was actually not intended to be a beagle in the beginning. Charles M. Shultz, the creator of Peanuts, based Snoopy on one of his childhood dogs named Spike, who died not long after Shultz returned from World War II.

However, Spike wasn’t a beagle but rather a pointer-hound mix and looked somewhat similar to a beagle.

In an interview, Shultz said the following:

“I patterned Snoopy in appearance after a dog I had when I was about 13 years old. His name was Spike, and he looked a little bit like the original Snoopy. But Snoopy didn’t start off being a beagle. It’s just that ‘beagle’ is a funny word.”

There were a couple references to Snoopy being a Beagle in the comic strip itself. Here’s one example: