Odie

Odie is a yellow-furred, brown-eared dog with a black tail. In the live-action/animated films based on the Garfield franchise, he is depicted as a wire-haired dachshund/terrier mix.[1] When the character was introduced, his ears were a solid black; this was changed in 1979 to prevent confusion with Snoopy from the Peanuts comic strip.[2]

He has a large tongue and slobbers in his appearances. After October 1997, he began walking regularly on two feet, instead of all fours, like Garfield. In the feature film adaptation Garfield: The Movie, Odie's ability to walk, and more importantly dance on two legs, earns him a lot of attention, and is a major plot point throughout the film. He is seen by Garfield as a "slobbering atrocity" in some of the earlier strips, and then later Garfield feels more sympathetic about Odie.

The name came from a car dealership commercial written by Jim Davis, which featured Odie the Village Idiot. Davis liked the name Odie and decided to use it again.[3] When Garfield was first submitted, Davis called Odie "Spot". He then visited cartoonist Mort Walker to show him his strips, and Walker told Davis "I had a dog named Spot". When Davis asked "Really?", Walker replied "Yes, in Boner's Ark, one of my comic strips". Davis changed Spot's name to Odie.

Odie first appeared in the strip on August 8, 1978; the date is considered his birthday. He was originally a pet to Jon Arbuckle's friend and roommate, Lyman, but Lyman disappeared from the series after about five years with no explanation, after which ownership of Odie transferred to Jon instead. However, there was a four part episode from The Garfield Show which explained what happened to Lyman and how they found him.

Like Garfield, Odie used to be presented as a quadrupedal but now stands mostly bipedal. Odie once appeared to talk in a certain comic, but it was just Garfield dreaming.

• Garfield and Friends official site