10 Best Far Side Comics Where Dogs Act Like Humans

Gary Larson’s long-running syndicated comic strip The Far Side is best known for its departures from reality, over the years cultivating an idiosyncratic brand of absurdist humor – while the strip never employed recurring characters, it had many recurring themes and motifs, and often resorted to the same techniques to get a laugh, including the use of anthropomorphic animals, dogs in particular, engaging in everyday human scenarios.

The Far Side famously lampooned and skewered all manner of human traditions, deconstructing the familiar by putting it in a new, often ludicrous context. Gary Larson often achieved this by depicting dogs, and more broadly canine behaviors, within the trappings of human civilization. Larson’s subject was always people, and his humor was always deeply human, though his best work often interpreted this through non-human characters. From dogs in the kitchen, to Labradors in scientific laboratories, Far Side was always at the top of its game when merging humankind with that of their most loyal animal companions. Below are 10 of the best Far Side comics featuring anthropomorphic dogs.

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10 “Whatever You Rolled In Sure Does Stink”

Dogs Meet For A Date

Everyone wants to look, and smell, their best when going on a date. As Gary Larson depicted in this Far Side strip, these anthropomorphic dogs do too – however, despite having developed sophisticated dating conventions, electricity, advanced architecture, and garbage pick-up services, these bipedal canines still have radically different senses of smell than human beings. A dog’s version of sprucing themselves up for a date is vastly different from a human’s. Rather than a sweet smelling perfume or cologne, the female dog here prepared by making herself smell worse, as her date marvels, “Oh ginger, you look absolutely stunning…and whatever you rolled in sure does stink.”

9 “Aunt Hilda’s Flapcats”

A Dog Cooks A Unique Breakfast.

Gary Larson’s Far Side was known for the strength of its visual gags, frequently not needing to use any words to get a significant laugh out of its readers. That is the case with this panel, which features a simple image, the hilarity of which can be easy to understate. A dog stands in front of a kitchen stove, wearing an apron with hearts all over it – flipping a cat in a skillet, as one would a pancake, with a box labled “Aunt Hilda’s Flapcats” visible. This is also an example of Larson’s ability to delicately toe the line between funny and horrifying, a border Far Side strips often dance across.

8 “Aisle 5:Table Scraps”

Dogs Supermarkets Are Very Different

In one of Larson’s sillier punchlines, Aisle 5 at the doggy grocery story is depicted as the “table scraps” section. This strip conjures the idea of a world where dog civilization and human civilization coexist side-by-side, with their industrial food supply chains even mingling. Of course, what makes this strip so funny is the fusion of human culture and classic pet behavior. Most dogs are beyond excited to get table scraps from their humans’ meals – in a dog supermarket, naturally, they would be a commodity worth devoting a significant amount of space to. Seeing dogs operate like humans in a supermarket is funny enough, but the “table scraps aisle” takes it to another level.

7 Dog Tired

This Pun Just Wrote Itself

Gary Larson was no stranger to puns, something evident in this clever, if on-the-nose Far Side strip. In the panel, a group of canines sit around on couches, in the middle of a conversation, when they have all suddenly become exhausted, or in other words, “dog-tired“, leading them stop conversing. Larson’s work thrived on his ability to produce imaginative images for the reader, which he often mixed with silly humor, like puns. This strip is a great example of how the Far Side creator was so adept at transporting unexpected participants into normal situations to make it all seem absurd and unexpected, while at the same time refusing to resist the opportunity for an obvious pun.

6 “Toilet Bowl”

Dogs Have Different Priorities

This Far Side strip satirizes news exposes, which have a tendency to over-amplify the importance of what they are reporting on, in order to justify the purpose of their work. Gary Larson does this by depicting a news program hosted by anthropomorphic dogs. Rather than some kind of urgent issue, the show is discussing “dogs that drink from the toilet bowl.” In a canine civilization, perhaps this is a pressing concern, in a way it might not be in the current human-dog owner-pet hierarchy; more likely, Larson is parodying the self-importance of nightly news programs and their need to continue generating sensationalized content.

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5 “Cat Chaser Maybe”

Not Exactly A Jury Of His Peers

In this Far Side strip, a dog has found itself on the wrong side of the law, as it stands trial for the murder of a cat – and seemingly, the unfortunate pup was also on the wrong side of the jury selection process, as his “peers” are all cats. Naturally, this does not present him much of an opportunity for a fair trial. The dog’s lawyer, another dog, isn’t exactly doing his client any favors, as he unconvincingly pleads to the jury: “Is that the face of a cat killer? Cat chaser maybe. But hey — who isn’t?” Somehow, it doesn’t seem as though this is going to work out in the accused’s favor.

4 “Doorknobs”

Dog Scientists Work To Unlock The Mysteries Of The Doorknob.

In one of the stand-out anthropomorphic dog jokes in Far Side history, this panel features dog scientists as they “struggled diligently to understand the Doorknow Principle.” As with other entries on this list, the humor of the strip arises from the collision of how dogs have been put in the positions of human, and how they remain animalistic. Despite being able to develop advanced equipment, such as microscopes, these human-like dogs are unable to grasp the mechanics of a doorknob – literally, in the sense that the joke comes from the idea that a doorknob would seem unfathomably complex to a creature incapable of designing, or operating it.

3 “Ate Your Homework”

A Class Full Of Homework Eaters.

An old excuse when a kid doesn’t do his schoolwork is the line, “a dog ate my homework“. This strip shows what Larson does best; turn the familiar into the absurd. In the comic, a classroom of dogs is probed by their teacher, also a dog, who asks if any of the students didn’t eat their homework on the way to school. This inversion of the classic excuse is a premium example of Far Side’s ability to take the ordinary and flip it completely in order to get a laugh. At the same time that they are elevated to the position of humans, the familiar nature of dogs remains exactly the same.

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2 “The Security Division”

Raymond Meets The Poodle Family.

This Far Side strip is the perfect collusion of familiar human behaviors and dog-humor, as a scrappy junkyard dog is taken home by his poodle girlfriend to meet her parents. Meeting the parents of a significant other can be daunting, especially when there are class divisions between the couple. Here, Raymond is a rough-and-tumble looking dog with a chest-tattoo of a skull, who works “security.” In contrast, his girlfriend, Linda, is a poodle who seems to be very different from him, making them a perfect proxy for opposites-attract human couples, who have to go through this same experience to some degree or another every day.

1 “The Wilsons”

A Guest Leaves A Bad Stain

This strip is perhaps the pinnacle of Far Side’s use of anthropomorphic dogs. Here, a well-dressed canine couple walks away from a house, as another pair of dogs stand on the porch watching them go, paws on their hips. The male dog in the foreground looks visibly defeated, given that he is clearly being berated by his wife – and rightfully so, as she reveals that he ruined their dinner party by making a mess on the hosts’ rug. “One of the nicest evenings I’ve ever spent at the Wilsons…and then you had to go and do that on the rug!” Even when dogs are dressed up in the trappings of humankind, some things never change.