Lynn's Comments: This year, I will be the same age as Charles Schulz was when I first met him. Cathy Guisewite ("Cathy") and I met "Sparky" Schulz in Washington. We teased him, singing "Will you still need me, will you still feed me--when I'm sixty four?" It was 1986. In 2011, it's my turn to be sixty four...and I'm looking at life through entirely different lenses!
Sparky and I both enjoyed drawing the dogs in our strips. Snoopy was a magical fantasy character who could do almost anything, while Farley was just a regular mutt. These cartoon drawings were alive to us and eventually both Farley and Snoopy became frontrunners in our work. If they did not appear regularly, our readers would ask "why?" so it was important for us to invent ways to showcase them as often as possible.
Farley allowed me to explore the goofy visual humor that a family pet provides. He was a pleasure to draw and when we had the opportunity to animate him, he was hilarious. Watching other artists "become" Farley as they made him scratch and roll, shake off dust, bark and run wildly in circles is something that makes me laugh every time I think about it.
I am so grateful for my friendship with Sparky and for having known Bill Melendez, who animated Snoopy and all the Peanuts characters. I keep in touch with Judy Sladky, who is the magic behind Snoopy On Ice, and as a friend of Jeannie Schulz, Sparky's widow, I will soon be speaking at the Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa with Jan Eliot, who does "Stone Soup". This will connect me again to friends in the industry and remind me once more...that I'm a very "lucky dog!"
