Dog Man

Unlike Petey, Dog Man is not an anthropomorphic animal; he is a chimeric superhero with the head of a dog and the body of a police officer. When two friends—Officer Knight and Greg the Dog—are critically injured in an explosion, a nurse sews Greg’s head onto Knight’s body, fusing them into one person. Though Dog Man has Greg’s intellect and his brain, Dog Man is distinct from Greg. He is effectively a cross between the two donors who comprise his body. Dog Man embodies the friendship between Officer Knight and Greg the Dog and their best qualities.

Like Greg the Dog, Dog Man is smart and has the heightened canine senses of hearing and smell. He is also nonspeaking and prone to undesired canine behaviors such as hyperactivity, excessive drooling, frequent licking, and indiscriminate failures at being housebroken. In “Weenie Wars,” he is shown to be affected by dog whistles. Like Officer Knight, he is a “tough cop” who wants to make the chief proud. He has Knight’s “human strength” and walks bipedally. However, Dog Man’s most celebrated qualities are his desire to be good and his creativity.

Like many of Pilkey’s characters, Dog Man struggles with impulsivity and behavioral disturbances. Despite his good intentions, he makes many mistakes and does things that his superiors find aggravating. Unlike Harold and George, Dog Man is not explicitly stated to be neurodiverse. He isn’t an explicit metaphor for neurodiversity either, like the robot 80-HD, whose name is a pun on “ADHD”. However, Dog Man can be read as a neurodiverse character, especially in conjunction with Pilkey’s other explicit references to the subject.

Dog Man is nonspeaking, a common trait among children with developmental disabilities such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD). His atypical communication style may also be compared to the behavior of children with such learning disorders as dyslexia, which often results in delays in speaking and reading. His doglike behavior may also be read as a metaphor for the challenges with impulse-control that can be associated with ADHD: Despite wanting to be well-behaved, Dog Man cannot always control his behavior.

The chief of police (simply referred to as “Chief”) is Dog Man’s direct superior. He is characterized as stern and short-tempered but ultimately kind and well-meaning. He is the target of a recurring joke in which other characters constantly inconvenience and annoy him. Throughout Dog Man, he is repeatedly confronted with excrement, urine, dog drool, and damaged personal belongings. The chief’s personality is a pastiche of a common stock character in police shows, crime comics, and procedural dramas. Like the prototypical fictional chief of police, the chief is gruff, by-the-book, overworked, and mustachioed. This either reflects the media George and Harold consume or is a straightforward parody on Pilkey’s part.

Though he is ostensibly Dog Man’s boss, the chief’s attitude toward him is reminiscent of that of an owner to a pet, a teacher to a student, or a parent to a child. Because Dog Man is part dog, he behaves in doglike ways. In turn, the chief scolds him as if he were a house pet: “Bad doggy! Bad! Bad! Bad! Bad Dog Man!” (54). The chief’s demeanor as a disciplinarian and his position of institutional authority also make him reminiscent of a strict teacher, especially when he is compared to George and Harold’s stern first-grade teacher, Ms. Construde. The child-parent dynamic between Dog Man and the chief is reflected in the chief’s genuine affection for Dog Man. It is most overt when he tearfully implores Dog Man to “make [him] proud” in Chapter 2.

Unlike most of the characters in Dog Man, the chief has a demonstrable character arc. While he is initially rigid and intolerant of Dog Man’s aggravating behavior, he becomes more and more accepting in each chapter, with the exception of “Book ‘Em Dog Man,” which George and Harold wrote several years prior to the other chapters.