Has a Dog Reason or Instinct?

Albert Payson Terhune's Sunday strip presents a narrative puzzle wrapped in dog behavior. The story follows a small dog navigating city traffic and discovering a buried bone—events that raise the question of whether the animal acts from reasoning or pure instinct. Terhune, known for his dog stories, uses the comic strip format to explore animal cognition through sequential panels and dialogue. The strip exemplifies how newspaper comics combined visual storytelling with philosophical inquiry, allowing artists to develop recurring themes across both daily and Sunday editions. The dense prose narrative integrated with illustration reflects the hybrid form that bridged traditional fiction and emerging graphic narrative conventions of the 1920s.