One of the most endearing characters in the comic strip Mutts by Patrick McDonnell will take the spotlight in a new collection this September. Breaking the Chain: The Guard Dog Story tells the heartbreaking and uplifting story of Guard Dog, the dog that spent more than 20 years chained up in his yard before ultimately being freed.
Abrams ComicsArts will publish the collection of strips that detail how Guard Dog’s owners abandoned him as they moved away, and his subsequent rescue by his friends Mooch and Earl, and a little girl named Doozy who frequently visited him over the years.
“This wasn’t a villain; this was a tragic character,” McDonnell writes in his introduction to the book. “I thought of all the real dogs in this country and around the world who suffer the same unbearable fate. Maybe my dog could be their voice. He could represent the cruelty that animals endure at the hands of humans, and the cruelty we inflict upon ourselves by staying chained to our own unconscious ways of thinking.”
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