What Is The Joke Behind This Infamous 'Garfield' Comic? It's Not What You Think It Is (Supposedly)

You may have seen this comic strip before:

Jon Arbuckle of Garfield takes a big swig of what he thinks is coffee at the vet. The veterinarian, Liz, congratulates Jon for being about to birth a healthy litter of puppies. Garfield exclaims, "I hate puppies!" as Jon spits out what he just drank in disgust.

At this point, you might be thinking, "There's no way Jon Arbuckle just drank a cup of dog semen." Supposedly, you might be right.

What Is The 'Garfield Dog Semen Comic'?

On May 30th, 1990, Jim Davis posted the above comic strip. It's unknown if readers at the time thought Jim Davis had just made a joke about Jon ingesting dog semen, but it definitely was a popular interpretation going around by the mid-2000s. The earliest known posts about the infamous comic strip appeared on Straight Dope and Fark in January of 2006. The idea that Davis had made a "dog semen" joke began snowballing about eight years later, when it hit Reddit. On January 22nd, 2015, it was posted to Twitter by @ccchauffe.

From here, it became something of an urban legend and even a sought-out collectible. Most of the internet could not believe that Garfield, a famously G-rated and widely derided daily comic strip, once went to an unbelievably lewd place for a punchline.

Is The Comic's Joke Actually 'Dog Semen'?

According to Jim Davis, no, the comic is not actually a dog semen joke. In October of 2017, Buzzfeed decided to get to the bottom of the confusion and ask the big man himself.

Davis said Jon actually drank a protein supplement given to animals to help them give birth to healthier young. Buzzfeed reported:

"On the farm, we used to give first-calf heifers a high protein supplement to help them deliver healthier calves," (Davis) said in a statement to BuzzFeed News. "The supplement was provided by our vet."
Since Liz is a vet, "I assumed that there would be a similar supplement for dogs," Davis said.
"So Jon is drinking a protein-enriched drink formulated for a pregnant dog."
That's why Liz mentions the "healthy" litter Jon would have -- because he had just drunk a supplement for pregnant dogs, not dog semen.
"There you have it!" Davis said.

This certainly makes more physical sense, as one cannot get pregnant by drinking semen, and it would be more in line with the general tone of Garfield that Jon drinks a less lewd substance. Of course, not everyone is as familiar with the particulars of animal breeding as Davis, so it makes quite a bit of sense that so many were unable to get that he was making an "animal supplement" joke than a "dog semen" one.

For the full history of the 'Garfield' dog semen comic, be sure to check out Know Your Meme's encyclopedia entry for more information.