A 1980s animated film, originally shown as a three-part series during ABC's "Weekend Specials." It was based on The Tuesday Dog by Jack Stoneley. It follows the life of Scruffy, an orphaned puppy left to fend for herself on the streets. Despite being made with children in mind, the film is often bleak and downbeat, and discusses the lives of stray animals without shying away from showing death.
This film provides examples of:
- Adaptation Expansion: The human villain Catlan and his dog Caesar were created just for the special. Also, Tibbles' mugging attempt was added in.
- All Dogs Are Purebred: In the novel, at least. While Scruffy herself is an exception, the book otherwise displays this trope with all the other dogs she meets. The film seems to avert this.
- Animal Talk: The special has all non-human animals able to communicate with one another through words. This is not the case in the book, which as in real life has barking and body language serving as the dogs' only means of communication.
- Baby-Doll Baby: Poor Collie had a pup die some time ago, so she carries around a tattered old boot and treats it like her baby.
- Babies Ever After: Butch and Scruffy have a litter of six puppies at the end of the special.
- Bloodless Carnage: Justified. Even without being shown from a distance, there are no signs of Duchess bleeding after she is shot....
at least not yet.- Averted in Butch & Caesar's battle in which we actually Butch's bloody wound in which Scruffy & the other dogs feared if it would be a fatal wound which fortunately it wasn't.
- Broken Aesop: There are unwanted pets living on the streets and being put to death every day, and it's up to us to think of ways to change this. Also, don't bother getting your pets spayed or neutered.
- Crapsack World: Certainly has its moments.
- Darker and Edgier: This was definitely one of Ruby-Spears darker works as Never Say "Die" and Frothy Mugs of Water are fully averted, the movie pulls no punches regarding how Dog Pounds were known for putting animals to sleep. Scruffy gets 3 parental figures in which the first two die and the third one nearly evades death twice. There is also Collie's backstory about her using a boot as a substitute for her dead puppy.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: A newspaper article about the pound narrowly saves them all from euthanasia. Scruffy and Butch go home with a family together, the other strays go home with owners that look like them or know them already (i.e, Randy being adopted by the bartender that often catered to him), and even Caesar happily goes home with a young boy.
- Expy: Scruffy and Butch bear a striking resemblance to Lady and the Tramp. Maybe even Rowf and Snitter from Richard Adams' The Plague Dogs in terms of personality and story.
- Family-Unfriendly Death: Poor, poor Tibbles.
- In the book, he died of natural causes.
- Gender Equals Breed: Scruffy and Butch's puppies.
- Heel–Face Turn: Caesar after his owner abandoned him. He thankfully finds a family with a young boy at the end of the story.
- Humans Are Bastards: The hunters that shot Duchess. They even think Scruffy herself (as a puppy) is posing a threat to the sheep! What the hell?
- Though the Dog Catchers turn out to be a subversion as they do genuinely like dogs and really dislike the idea of putting the dogs to sleep but view it as a really unfortunate part of their job.
- Incurable Cough of Death: Tibbles has one.
- Killed Off for Real: Scruffy's mother, Duchess. Also, Scruffy's homeless master, Tibbles.
- Lovable Rogue: Butch.
- May–December Romance: Scruffy and Butch.
- Narrating the Obvious: The narrator.
- Parental Substitute: After her puppy died, Collie finds a new child...a boot.
- In the book she is, for unexplained reasons, infertile, and her affection for the boot is partly due to her experiencing a false pregnancy.
- Plot Hole: A minor one in the book, wherein the collie is deaf which gets her non-fatally hit by a truck. At one point she hears Scruffy barking and rushes over to see what the trouble is.note
- Pounds Are Animal Prisons: Played with. The dog catchers do seem evil at first, but in reality, they're big-hearted dog lovers who would prefer to never euthanize another dog. It's just a deeply unfortunate part of their job.
- Undying Loyalty: Deconstructed with Scruffy's Mother, Duchess. Her owners decide to give her to their neighbor, but when she sneaks back into her old house, the neighbor ends up missing her. This causes her and her daughter a lot of trouble, especially when the house is set on fire by a demolition crew, yet they are noticed, saved and taken in. Since Duchess wants to find her original masters and go back to them, they leave the home to go look for them. Alas, this ends up getting Duchess killed.
