Deputy Dawg is Dead

Well, the guy who did his voice, Dayton Allen, is, and that's more or less the same thing.

Allen died in Hendersonville, North Carolina on November 11 at 85 of a massive stroke.

Deputy Dawg was one of my favorite boyhood cartoon characters.

He appeared in 1960, a subpar lawman more concerned with napping than catching bad guys.

His human boss, the Sheriff, a white-moustached humanoid toon, regularly reprimanded him for incompetence and inadequate performance, but Deputy Dawg never let it get him down.

Meanwhile, his homies - Muskie the Muskrat, Ty Coon, and Vincent Van Gopher - looked on in amusement.

Allen, who did the voices of almost all the characters, would often give them the voices of well-known celebrities, adding to the general merriment.

Allen was also the voice of the cartoon magpies Heckle and Jeckle, and before that spent four years on the original Howdy Doody Show with Buffalo Bob Smith, giving voice to marionette characters like Mr. Bluster and Flub-a-Dub as well as human characters like Pierre the Chef.

R.I.P.