The Peanuts holiday specials are safe.
Snoopy always makes it out alive.
That’s a wonderful movie, and it was inspired by a true story.
I haven’t seen Arthur the King yet, but I saw an ad at one point for the movie that just straight up said “Don’t worry, this dog lives.” Probably realizing how some people would be hesitant to see this kind of movie, where the dog typically does die.
I know it was a concern of mine, so I’m glad they did that.
That sounds right up the Squidbillies’ alley.
Farley died recently in the reprinted “For Better Or For Worse” comic strip.
I remember when Farley died the first time. Holy crap were people upset!
The opening sequence of Eastwood’s Pale Rider as well.
Meet the Parents, original 1992 version: fiancée’s family’s dog drowns after chasing a popsicle stick thrown into a lake.
Oh, man, I absolutely cannot watch that one episode (despite otherwise loving Futurama) and even just hearing the song they use at the end can make me tear up.
I absolutely bawled at the ending.
Plus, my mom had left me to read in the car while she went grocery shopping (it was a different time) so when she came back and found me in hysterics, she thought, “Something had happened!!?!”
Me: “IT DID!!!”
… which did not de-escalate the situation in the short term.
The dog’s death isn’t shown, but in Shooter, Mark Wahlberg comments about the men who framed him – “They killed my dog.”
Shiloh won the Newbery, and no, the dog doesn’t die for a change. But for a book intended for kids, it’s still some tough sledding.
I had people gift me copies of Marley & Me and The Art of Racing in the Rain and they went straight into the Goodwill pile. I’ve had enough of losing my own dogs IRL, I don’t want to read stories or see movies about it.
In Neverending Story, Araxt the horse dies.
Max’s dog is killed in Mad Max II The Road Warrior
In Cool Hand Luke, a bloodhound named Blue dies while tracking Luke.
Did you know Old Yeller used to be used in informal psych tests for children by the LA county court system?
What they would do is say you had someone under 18 appearing in court for some reason say they were taken from their parent(s) and they needed to see if the kid was under emotional distress …
So in the daycare room wed watch 1 or 2 movies some cartoons and color… like an after-school daycare the 2nd movie was always Old Yeller and the daycare attendant would write notes on say if a kid didn’t cry at all or one cried too much …there was a spectrum they judged on
sometimes a specific kid would have a write-up and they’d send one in with an excuse for watching it …
How I found this out was I ran into one of the volunteers that helped out with the kids decades later and I said " I remembered we watched old yeller every damn time I had to be there (which I was every 6 weeks for 3 years) and she laughed and explained why …
We musn’t forget Adriana’s dog, Cosette , who was killed when Christopher sat on her in a heroin induced stupor on The Sopranos.
Wait…did Sounder die?
The dog-dies-in-the-end trope goes back at least to The Odyssey (8th century BCE). The elderly dog Argos dies just after recognizing his master Odysseus upon his return to Ithaca following a twenty-year absence.
In Jaws the shark eats a dog chasing the stick or ball. I forget which .
“Pippin” I think.
Two dogs in The Hills Have Eyes (1977):
Beauty dies.
Beast lives…and stars in a sequel - even getting his own flashback! - but played by a different canine actor.
Dambusters has a dog that dies. But we can’t mention his name any more. (Which is a good thing.)