General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Dug Days

Dug Days is a series of animated short films from Pixar Animation Studios released on Disney+, following the talking dog Dug from the 2009 film Up as he adjusts to suburban life with his owner, Carl Fredricksen. Written and directed by Bob Peterson, the voice of Dug, the series premiered on September 1, 2021 with five shorts and concluded with a sixth, Carl's Date, on June 16, 2023.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Format	Five Pixar shorts set in and around Dug's new backyard, each told from his own excited, slightly distorted point of view¹
Premiere	All five shorts debuted on Disney+ on September 1, 2021¹
Filmmakers	Written and directed by Bob Peterson, an Academy Award nominee and Emmy Award winner; produced by Kim Collins¹
Voice cast	Bob Peterson as Dug, Ed Asner as Carl, Jordan Nagai as Russell³
Episode runtimes	"Squirrel!" 9:21, "Puppies" 9:14, "Flowers" 6:36¹
Final episode	"Carl's Date," June 16, 2023, released theatrically ahead of Pixar's Elemental²^•⁴
Reception	100% Tomatometer from 7 critic reviews and 81% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes³

Spoilers

Premise and setting

The series picks up shortly after the end of Up. Carl, who accepted Dug as his own at the end of that film, has traded in the 1920s airship Spirit of Adventure for a new house in the suburbs, complete with a doggy door and a big backyard. Because Dug grew up at Paradise Falls, the suburbs are an exotic and exciting adventure to him, and each short shows everyday events through his point of view.¹^•⁵

Dug's high-tech collar, which translates his thoughts into speech, remains central: his every reaction is voiced, from "Squirrel!" to "Hello, Small Mailman!"⁶ Producer Kim Collins described the setup as a way to keep the setting simple and emphasize character.⁷

Episodes

The five premiere shorts each carry a theme drawn from dog behavior, including territoriality, nurturing, protection, fear, and smell.¹^•⁷

"Squirrel!" (9:21): an afternoon of Carl's backyard project and Dug "helping" turns when Dug comes face to face with his sworn enemy.¹
"Puppies" (9:14): Dug babysits a litter of puppies, which turns out to be more work than he expects; Peterson was inspired in part by old commercials showing toddlers joyfully inundated by puppies.¹
"Flowers" (6:36): Dug's first fireworks show; Carl describes fireworks as "flowers in the sky" but neglects to mention the noise. Peterson based the story on his own dog's fear of fireworks and said he did not want to make it unless the problem was solved by the end.¹^•⁸
"Smell": Dug smells something he has never smelled before.⁹
"Science": the short containing Peterson's favorite moment of the series, when Carl describes what it is like to love a pet.⁸
"Carl's Date" (June 16, 2023): a later short that closed the series and played in theaters before Elemental.²^•⁴

Production

Peterson, who was a screenwriter and co-director on the Oscar-winning Up, returned as writer, director, and voice of Dug; Kim Collins, a Pixar veteran whose production management credits include The Incredibles and Toy Story 4, produced.¹^•⁷ Peterson has said Dug's voice is based on how he talks to his own dogs, and that the character grew out of an earlier, shelved science-fiction project developed with Pete Docter in which a dog suddenly began to speak.⁷

Ed Asner's return. Asner, who voiced Carl in Up, returned to the recording studio roughly a decade later to record new dialogue. He died on August 29, 2021, three days before the series premiered, and coverage of the series noted Dug Days as a celebration of his career and possibly his final vocal role.¹^•¹⁰

Russell's voice. Jordan Nagai was 21 by the time of recording and no longer sounded like a junior explorer, so the filmmakers used unused lines Nagai had recorded for Up, including a small song Peterson described as opening a time capsule.¹

Pandemic-era recording. The series was just gearing up when production shifted to work from home in 2020. Peterson recorded a large portion of Dug's lines in a cramped closet below his stairs, and the team equipped voice actors' homes with recording gear and updated Ethernet connections so reviews would not crawl along.⁷

Music. The score is by Andrea Datzman, a longtime collaborator of Michael Giacchino, together with Curtis Green. It is designed to represent Dug's overblown inner emotions and includes nods to Giacchino's Oscar-winning Up score, with a twist on it in the opening credits.¹

Reception

On Rotten Tomatoes the series holds a 100% Tomatometer from 7 critic reviews and an 81% audience score from more than 50 ratings.³ Common Sense Media gave it 5 out of 5, calling it endearing, funny, and clever, and named it a Common Sense Selection for ages 5 and up.⁶ Critics singled out Peterson's performance as Dug, which one reviewer said carries each episode, and the return of Asner as Carl.⁹

The series is listed as TV-PG by Rotten Tomatoes and Disney+ publicity, while Metacritic and Plex list it as TV-G.³^•¹¹^•⁵

Place in the Up franchise

Dug Days extends a Disney tradition of human-and-dog shorts that Peterson traces back to Mickey and Pluto, with Lady and the Tramp in between; Collins noted that streaming on Disney+ gave the studio a new way to continue that tradition of shorts.⁸ Pixar's own history records that the series kicked off the annual September celebration Pixar Fest on September 1, 2021, and that Carl's Date later accompanied Elemental in theaters, directed by Peterson and produced by Collins.⁴ The series has ended, with no further episodes after Carl's Date.²

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Scripted television and comedy series › Animated television series (individual series) › Children's animated adventure and fantasy series › Comedy and slice-of-life series › Premiered 2020 to 2024

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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