Before Snoopy, there was Spike: a real dog who accompanied Charles M. Schulz just as his dream of becoming a designer was born.
It was 1934 when Spike joined the Schulz family. Charles was still a boy, and that black and white dog with a particular character soon drew his attention.
Three years later something happened, seen with today’s eyes, seems almost the perfect beginning of a story destined to become great.
In 1937, when Schulz was still a teenager, Spike's design was published by Ripley's Believe It or Not!. The father, Carl, had written to the famous column telling some of the unusual habits of the dog and annexed the drawing made by his son.
It was the first published drawing by Charles Schulz.
That little success came long before the Peanuts, Charlie Brown and the character who would turn Schulz into one of the most famous comics authors of the twentieth century.
But Spike doesn't disappear from his story.
Years later, that dog would become one of the main sources of inspiration for Snoopy: Schulz himself explicitly indicated it as a source of inspiration for the character.
And when, in 1975, one of Snoopy's brothers appeared in the stripes, he also named Spike.
The link between the life of the author and his imaginary universe remained so engraved directly in his stripes.
With time, Peanuts would become an international phenomenon, coming to be published in about 2,600 newspapers and dozens of countries.
Yet, behind that extraordinary career, there was also a very simple origin: a boy who loved to draw and a dog who offered him something to observe.
Before Snoopy became an icon, Spike had already left his mark.