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Dog Man Unleashed
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Chapter 8-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 8 Summary: “Flat Cat Fever”
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of illness and death.
Dog Man will not let go of the ball on the tank’s controller arm, no matter who tries to persuade him. Flat Petey, wanting to capture the tank for himself, comes up with a plan: He and Feeva go into a nearby museum and use the Living Spray on a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton. It immediately springs to life and begins chasing them with a ferocious roar. As they are pictured running away from the animated fossil, Flat Petey yells to Feeva to give him the Obey Spray.
Close-up illustrations show the hand-off of the can and then Flat Petey hurriedly shaking the can as the T. rex’s huge mouth begins to close over Flat Petey’s tail. He turns and sprays the dinosaur. He orders the Tyrannosaurus to “[d]estroy Dog Man!” (125). Flat Petey and Feeva climb onto the skeleton’s back, and it carries them outside. It snaps at Dog Man, who finally jumps off the tank. Flat Petey and Feeva jump onto the tank in his place. A Flip-o-Rama, labeled “Jurassic Bark,” shows Dog Man running from the dinosaur as it tries to bite him.
Zuzu, watching this from Sarah’s arms, pulls a bone from Sarah’s purse; she understands what the little dog is trying to communicate, and she tells the Chief. The Chief calls out to Dog Man to remind him that the T. rex is made of bones. Dog Man loses his fear of the animated skeleton immediately. He jumps onto its head and begins licking it. As he travels down its spine, licking and licking, another Flip-o-Rama shows the dinosaur rolling around and laughing because Dog Man’s licking tickles it. The T. rex embraces Dog Man. Heart emanata surround its face. It sets Dog Man down, pats his head, and then bounds away, tossing flowers behind as it goes.
This turn of events outrages Flat Petey. He examines the can of Obey Spray and sees fine print warning that “[l]aughter may undo the effects of Obey Spray” (141). He comforts himself with the thought that at least he has captured the tank full of treasure. Just then, however, the pet shop robber appears, telling Flat Petey, “Not so fast!!!” (142).
Chapter 9 Summary: “The Mysterious Stranger Returns”
Near the tank, two children notice what is happening and hurry over to watch, saying, “Hey, look! Some old dudes are fighting!” (144). The mysterious pet store robber and Flat Petey argue over who will keep the tank. The robber uses his telekinetic power to pick up a telephone booth—an object the children do not recognize—and fling it toward Flat Petey, who is on top of the Treasure Tank 2000. When he tosses a stack of newspapers and then a mailbox, the children do not recognize these items, either. He throws more and more things, but they crash on the front of the tank instead of hitting Flat Petey.
The police, Sarah, and Zuzu stand watching helplessly, but then Zuzu comes up with a plan. Zuzu rushes over to the pet shop thief and uses her teeth to pull away his long coat. What is left is a box on top of an orange-and-black striped three-legged stool. The Chief suddenly realizes that the stool is from his office, and the coat the robber was wearing also belongs to him. He lifts the box away to reveal Flippy in his bowl. Sarah asks how a fish could manage everything Flippy has managed, and Flippy launches into a long speech explaining how he gained his powers and started moving around on the stool. By the time he finishes the speech, Flat Petey and the Treasure Tank 2000 are gone. One of the children explains that, during Flippy’s “expositional monologue,” Flat Petey drove away, up a nearby mountain. Flippy levitates his bowl and gives chase. Dog Man, Sarah, Zuzu, and the Chief follow in the Chief’s car.
At the top of the snowy mountain, they find Flat Petey and Boog E. Feeva gloating over Flippy’s nearly frozen bowl of water. Flippy is slowly freezing to death. When Feeva comments to Flat Petey, “we won,” Flat Petey snaps at Feeva, claiming that he did all the work and that Feeva is “nothing but a mooch” (157). He says that he will not share his treasure and kicks Feeva off the tank into the snow.
A book, Body Snatching for Dummies, falls out of Feeva’s bag as he hits the ground, and Flippy uses the last of his energy to open the book and read about how to possess another person’s body. Several close-up illustrations of Flippy show his face getting increasingly calmer as he transforms himself from a fish to “pure energy.” Flippy disappears and is replaced with a glowing ball of light. Knowing that he only has two minutes to get into a body, he heads for the Chief. Before he can catch the Chief, however, Dog Man realizes that he is a ball and grabs him in his mouth. The two minutes expire, and Flippy fades away into nothingness. The Chief hugs Dog Man and tells him he is a “good boy.”
Chapter 10 Summary: “An Ice Ending”
The Chief orders Flat Petey to get in the Chief’s car. Flat Petey runs the car over with the tank. He taunts them, pointing out that if the only way they can get down the mountain is on foot, they will freeze to death trying to get down. Since he is made of paper, he tells them he will be fine because paper does not freeze. Dog Man gives him a giant lick, getting the paper he is made from all soggy. Flat Petey freezes solid and falls over onto his face.
Dog Man, the Chief, Feeva, Sarah, and Zuzu ride down the mountain quickly, using Flat Petey as a sled. A two-page splash panel with insets on each side shows their laughing faces—and Flat Petey’s shocked, frozen one—as they zip down the slopes, turning flips in the air. When Petey thaws at the bottom of the mountain, he is outraged because they used him as a sled. Feeva asks whether Flat Petey has ever played rock, paper, scissors. He pulls some scissors from his bag and sprays them with Living Spray. He tells Flat Petey, “Scissors always beats paper!!!!” as he releases the shears to chase Flat Petey (180). A large panel shows Flat Petey running away into the sunset with the scissors close behind him. The Chief tells Dog Man that he is a “good boy” once again, and Sarah proclaims him “our hero!”
Epilogue Summary
Sarah says that she and Zuzu are going to walk home. Dog Man and the Chief turn to walk home. The Chief sums up the day: It was a long day in which no lessons were learned and no moral truths were illustrated—“It was all just a buncha mindless action and dumb luck!” (187). He proclaims this “[t]he best birthday ever!” (188).
Chapter 8-Epilogue Analysis
Dog Man’s victory is largely made possible by The Power of Friendship and Loyalty he has had during his adventures. Zuzu communicates with Sarah by taking the bone from Sarah’s purse, miming that the humans should use their power of speech—which Zuzu and Dog Man lack—to remind Dog Man that the animated Tyrannosaurus rex is just a collection of bones. Up until this point, Dog Man is simply running in fear from the dinosaur’s teeth, and no one has a plan to save him. When the mysterious pet store thief is bombarding the tank with heavy objects, placing everyone in danger, none of the humans have any idea how to stop him or capture either him or Flat Petey. Zuzu is the one who has the idea to pull the thief’s long coat away, revealing his true identity as Flippy, the Chief’s pet fish. This prompts Flippy’s monologue, which allows Flat Petey to escape, diffusing the situation temporarily and allowing the humans to regroup.
From this point, Dog Man can follow his instincts and lead the humans to victory over the story’s two remaining antagonists, further developing The Struggle Between Good and Evil. Flat Petey’s and Flippy’s instincts, by contrast, lead to their downfalls. The two villains are selfish and egotistical: they are unwilling to cooperate to defeat the police and instead spend their final chapters boasting and working at cross purposes; each tries to be the one who walks away with all the treasure. Flippy’s monologue bragging about his cleverness is what allows Flat Petey to temporarily gain the upper hand and drive away up the mountain in the Treasure Tank 2000. When Flippy finally follows, he is at the mercy of the cold, as he does not have an accomplice to save him. As soon as Flat Petey believes he has vanquished Flippy, he betrays his accomplice. Bragging about his effectiveness, he kicks Feeva off the tank—and thus unwittingly provides Flippy with a means of escape in the form of Feeva’s book on body snatching. Were it not for Dog Man’s inclination to chase balls, Flippy might have succeeded in possessing the Chief, and the battle between Flippy and Flat Petey would have continued.
In the story’s comical finale, Flat Petey’s evil instincts continue to work against him. Even after Dog Man defeats Flippy and Flat Petey seems to get what he wanted—he is now in sole possession of the treasure—Flat Petey does not simply drive away to enjoy his victory. Because he is innately evil, he crushes the Chief’s car and taunts the police, Sarah, and Feeva, saying that now they will freeze to death on the mountain. Dog Man also does what comes most naturally to him—he licks Flat Petey, causing Flat Petey to get soggy enough to freeze. In continuing the motif of absurdity, the good guys zip down the mountain using the frozen villain as a sled. Flat Petey’s final defeat is another element of absurdity: he is chased away by animated scissors in a final reappearance of the text’s rock, paper, scissors motif. Feeva, the man Flat Petey has recently betrayed, brings the scissors to life, making it clear that disloyalty creates as many problems as loyalty solves.
In the Epilogue, the police, Sarah, and Feeva go their separate ways after their victory over the forces of evil. This creates a moment for a private conversation between the Chief and Dog Man. Epilogues are traditionally a place where stories offer a follow-up to the main action, commenting on its outcomes and significance. In Dog Man Unleashed, the Epilogue satirically comments on this function: The Chief, in a metafictional final word, assures Dog Man that their adventure has been nothing but “mindless action and dumb luck” and resulted in no meaningful outcomes for anyone (187). The pleasure these two main characters take in the absurdity of their day underscores The Importance of Creativity and Silliness as one of the text’s primary purposes.
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