Dogs
Dogs appear regularly in Zappa's work:
- On the cover of Absolutely Free an advertisement for a dog collar can be seen, with the slogan "Buy a Fydo. Fits swell!"
- On the covers of Cruising With Ruben & The Jets, Just Another Band From L.A. and Ahead Of Their Time Zappa and his band members are depicted with dog noses. Illustrator Cal Schenkel did this as a tribute to the dog characters in Carl Barks' comic strips about Donald Duck.
- In The Story Of Ruben & The Jets it is revealed that Ruben has three dogs: Benny, Baby and Martha. The names Martha and Benny appeared earlier on the artwork of the cover of Absolutely Free, along with Ruben's name.
- Does This Kind Of Life Look Interesting To You?: "A dog, a car, an epidemic of body lice with your own record company"
- Strictly Genteel (The Track): "Reach out your hand to the girl in the dog book."
- A dog with sunglasses can be seen on the covers of Francesco Zappa,Them Or Us and of The Perfect Stranger.
- Evelyn, A Modified Dog
- Stink-Foot: a dog, Fido, is called to fetch some slippers and goes into an argument about the essence of Conceptual Continuity
- Dogs can be heard barking during the intro of Andy
- Nanook Rubs It: while Nanook is rubbing a chorus sings "Here Fido, here Fido...."
- Cheepnis: "'Cause she just might box yer dog/She just might box yer doggie/ An' leave you a dried-up dog biscuit" (...) the people try to catch Frunobulax by calling "Here Fido, here Fido..."
- Dog Breath, even though the term is also American slang for a person with very bad breath
- Zomby Woof: "woof" is a sound associated with dogs
- Honey Don't You Want A Man Like Me: "He had an Irish setter"
- Later That Night: "You threw my best sharkskin suit out on the lawn, right on top of some dog waste"
Specific articles about dogs
- Fido
- Phydeaux III
- Frunobulax, named after Zappa's own dog Fruney.
- Evelyn
- Dogess
- Killer Collie
Specific references to poodles
- The Poodle Lecture
- Dirty Love and Stink-Foot: "The poodle bites, the poodle chews it."
- Hunchentoot and Cheepnis: "The monster which the peasants in this area call Frunobulax and apparently a very large poodle."
- Food Gathering In Post-Industrial America: "as the denizens of New Perfect America dine on rats, poodles,..."
