Instant national bestseller! From the award-winning syndicated comic strip Mutts, the long-awaited “Guard Dog” story is now collected and presented in full color along with supplementary material, timed for the 30th anniversary Guard Dog made his debut in the
Mutts comic strip in 1995 and quickly became one of the strip’s most beloved characters. As a chained dog longing for freedom, he’s played an important role in raising awareness about the cruelty of tethering and has inspired countless
Mutts readers to become involved in animal welfare.
In October 2023, nearly three decades after his debut, Guard Dog’s freedom story began to unfold in newspapers and online. After being abandoned by his owner, left alone and suffering, Guard Dog was discovered by his animal friends Mooch and Earl, and ultimately rescued by Doozy, a kindly neighborhood girl, and Ozzie, Earl’s guardian. After years of visiting Guard Dog to provide him with comfort and support, Doozy adopted him—marking the end of a long life of neglect and the beginning of one filled with love and safety.
The story line concludes with Guard Dog not only getting a new home but also a new name—Sparky—a nod to Patrick McDonnell’s greatest artistic inspiration, Charles M. Schulz, creator of
Peanuts.
As Guard Dog found his happy ending, McDonnell received requests from readers all over the world, many of whom had been invested in Guard Dog’s plight for decades, hoping that the long-anticipated story would be made into a book. This collected volume answers the demands of those passionate readers.
Brought to life with Patrick McDonnell’s warm and intimate art, and featuring the complete story, now in color for the first time,
Breaking the Chain is an emotionally resonant vignette whose grounding in the real-life animal neglect issues that affect millions of chained dogs worldwide will move both long-time
Mutts fans and first-time readers.
"For seven weeks in fall 2023, Patrick McDonnell's ... comic strip MUTTS told a long-awaited tale that broke our hearts and gave us hope. Now, collected for the first time and in color, is the complete Guard Dog story, along with real-life stories of rescue and resources for readers who want to take action to help ensure that no dog is tied to a stake and denied their freedom"--
