…certainly one of the most wonderful comic strip characters ever created.
But I would have enjoyed Peanuts every bit as much without him. Maybe more.
Oh no! You’d have missed “Whirly Dog”. And "ol ‘dime-a-dozen’ ". And how could you hate Freida’s cat without having Snoopy for it to play off?
CB needs someone loyal to him, otherwise you’d start to hate everyone else.
Without Snoopy there would be no Woodstock. I loved that little bird.
Charles Schulz admitted it was hard not having Snoopy take over the whole strip.
Snoopy is the best thing about the strip. Otherwise, it just wallows in depression.
You say that as if it’s a bad thing!
Is Snoopy really loyal to him? Sometimes he barely seems to acknowledge Charlie Brown’s existence.
I remember a strip where Charlie Brown was going away somewhere for an extended period–probably to camp, or something. He says a big, emotional farewell to Snoopy, telling him how much he’ll miss him and all that.
After he’s gone, Snoopy thinks, “Now I remember. That was the round-headed kid who brings me my food.”
I knew I was setting myself up! 
Over the years Snoopy has been mean to Chuck, but on the whole I think he likes him. Over that long a run, characters act out of character sometimes. Snoopy does laugh along with the crowd at CB in the Christmas special, which always bugged me. (Linus is just as much at fault as CB, but the mob doesn’t turn on him.)
That’s cause they all know Linus has got a Bible quote just waiting to smack them down with!
And CB would be hard-pressed to field a baseball team. Snoopy is his shortstop.
“And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers.” - Linus Winnfield (His security blanket says “Bad MF” on it)
Jeez, no. Then it’d just be a superior Family Circus or some shit like that.
If you google ‘did Snoopy ruin Peanuts’, there seem to be dozens of articles discussing that. When the strip started out, it was a bit darker and depression, existential ennui, neurotic behavior etc. were shown, filtered through the ‘little folks’ - out of the mouths of babes! Without Snoopy, whose exploits greatly expanded the strip, Peanuts wouldn’t have at all lasted as long as it did.
Myself, I LOVE Snoopy. He did more or less take over the strip, but how many sad sack Charlie Brown storylines can we read without feeling down?
And yes, Snoopy does love Charlie Brown. He has actually demonstrated affection to the ol’ blockhead.
I was going to say that you could separate it into two separate comic strips, one about Snoopy and one about everyone else. But I realized that that’s not exactly true: There’s significant interaction between Snoopy and Lucy (Eww! Dog kisses!) and Snoopy and Linus (fighting over his blanket). The better split might be the ones focused on Snoopy (which includes his war fantasies, his conversations with Woodstock, the hints of his TARDIS doghouse, etc.), and the ones not focused on him (in which he acts, mostly, like a dog). Even that’s not a perfect fit, because you’ve still got the weird interactions with Peppermint Patty, who thinks of him as a “funny big-nosed kid”, but it’s closer.
On the one hand, without Snoopy there’s be no WWI Flying Ace, and I’d have missed one of my favorite model kits growing up.
On the other hand, if Snoopy didn’t exist, there’s be no Joe Cool. And the world would be better.
I got that model for Christmas one year! It may have been the only model kit I ever finished assembling. But then as I was showing it off to my family, my aunt’s girlfriend pointed out that it wasn’t an accurate replica of a Sopwith Camel (evidently, she was a WWI buff and was speaking from some authority as an enthusiast regarding early military aircraft).*
I never owned the soap dish, but I did have an electric toothbrush in his image.
*Wow. The degree of detail with which that memory is imbued makes me wonder if it was a key experience in the formation of my personal behavioral traits (or maybe it just explains why I never became a model-kit hobbyist).
C’mon; he wasn’t the most admirable Doper, but there have been far worse…
I had that also!
As far as Snoopy showing affection for Charlie Brown, my favorite is this strip.
I had the music box of the doghouse with Snoopy on top as the WWI Flying Ace and British roundels stuck on both sides of the roof. When wound up, it played “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary.”
This one: