Lizzie McGuire: Dogless, but beloved Disney Channel series anyway

Lizzie McGuire didn’t really have much of a canine presence, though it was a hit.

Lizzie McGuire, starring Hilary Duff (Agent Cody Banks, A Cinderella Story) in the title role, stands out as one of the early Disney Channel hits, and it definitely still holds up.

But unlike similar shows like Full House or 7th Heaven, dogs don’t really have much of a presence in the series (at all). Why is that?

On a practical level, Lizzie McGuire was the 13th Disney Channel Original Series, and the budget was fairly tight (partially why it was canceled after just two seasons). Having a dog on set would create a lot of extra headaches and takes, and so there probably wasn’t room in the budget for a McGuire family pet.

There was room, weirdly, for the neighbors’ pet monkey Fredo, who terrorized everyone and broke anything breakable (2.03 “Mom’s Best Friend,” 2.28 “The Greatest Crush of All’).

For readers unfamiliar with the series, Lizzie McGuire is set in a fictional Southern California suburb named Hillridge, and follows the adventures of Lizzie and her best friends Miranda Sanchez (Lalaine) and David Gordon (Adam Lamberg) as they navigate middle school.

In real life, the show (which had some major continuity problems) ran for two seasons from January 2001 to February 2004. In universe, the timeline began in August 1999 and ended in June or July 2001 with the events of The Lizzie McGuire Movie, which came out in theaters in summer 2003.

One of the the only times dogs are mentioned in the series is in the B-plot of “First Kiss” (2.01) when Matt McGuire (Jake Thomas) gives his best friend/girlfriend Melina’s dogs a bath as part of a scheme to finish his baseball card collection. A small terrier is seen, along with a Bernese Mountain Dog.

The other time occurs at the end of “Over the Hill” (2.11) when everyone discovers that the creepy noises within the McGuire house are actually a litter of puppies a stray dog was raising under the deck in the backyard.

In real life, Duff is a huge rescue dog advocate, whose pack currently consists of French Bulldog Peaches, as well as other dogs named Momo and Lucy. She wrote an appreciative tribute to her Berner/Aussie mix DuBois in the 2012 book A Letter to My Dog: Notes to Our Best Friends. DuBois was part of a pack of four at the time.

A revival project following a now-adult Lizzie was scheduled to drop this summer on Disney Plus, but production was halted after two episodes due to creative differences, so it’s unclear if this will see the light of day, and if so, whether it will stay on Disney Plus or move to Hulu. It’s also unclear whether this will be a continuation or a sequel series.

It seems very probable that Sam and Jo McGuire (Robert Carradine and Hallie Todd) likely have dogs now that are very spoiled, as that seems to happen after kids move out. These dogs also would very likely have their own Instagram and Twitter accounts that Lizzie and Matt would roll their eyes at but secretly find highly entertaining.

So while it might not have dogs involved, LIzzie McGuire is a terrific example of how to build a grounded, family-friendly sitcom, while referencing just enough pop culture to be interesting from a historical standpoint as well. All episodes are streaming (very much out of order) on Disney Plus.