Studio: Walt Disney Productions
Distributor: Columbia Pictures
Short Synopsis
Mickey drives up to Minnie's house to take her on a picnic. Minnie asks if she can bring her "little Rover", and Rover turns out to be a bloodhound as big as Mickey. They tie him to the back of the car and set off, but on the way Rover spots two rabbits and gives chase, dragging the car behind him. He follows one rabbit through a chain of burrows until the rabbit pulls the last hole away and Rover bangs his head on the ground. At the picnic spot, Mickey winds up a portable gramophone and the two mice dance to "In the Good Old Summer Time", while birds and squirrels quietly carry off the food. Rover sniffs his way back to them just as a storm breaks. Mickey grabs the food and the gramophone, both now crawling with animals and insects, and the three jump into the car. Rover's wagging tail works as a windscreen wiper as they drive home in the rain.
Why It Matters
- Watch the dog. Norman Ferguson animates Rover licking Mickey, gnawing at his own fleas and sniffing straight into the camera, and the character already has the eager, single-minded physicality that would make him one of Disney's best pantomime performers.
- Rover is the first appearance of the dog who became Pluto. He returned six months later in The Moose Hunt (1931), now named Pluto and Mickey's pet, and became so popular that he got his own series in 1937. Ferguson remained the studio's specialist on the character for years.
Notes and Trivia
- Ferguson first animated a pair of bloodhounds in The Chain Gang (1930); Rover develops that design, and the gag of the dog sniffing into the lens is recycled from it, and used again in The Moose Hunt and The Pointer (1939).
- In January 1931 Floyd Gottfredson adapted the story for a week of the Mickey Mouse newspaper strip.
- See also: Mickey's Orphans (1931).