Dogs should not actually chew bones. While canines will pay a certain amount of attention to bones in the wild, it’s in an effort to get the last of the meat off them or get to the marrow inside them. The bones shown in cartoons, however, have not a single scrap of meat on them. They’re also always specifically humeri or femurs. The logistics of what species the bones would come from gets complicated; apparently, a cow femur averages thirteen inches in length, and a pig’s is about seven, and of course it’s ridiculous to try to assume anything about species size from a Disney cartoon anyway so I may be overthinking things again.

Pluto has a bone and is quite pleased with himself. However, he encounters Butch, who would also very much like his bone. Butch is tougher—perhaps not “bigger,” depending on your measurements, but tougher—and takes the bone. Pluto first digs a very large bone-shaped hole and fools Butch into believing that he’s buried a bone about as big as his entire body there. Butch drops the original bone but isn’t fooled for long. Pluto escapes into a junkyard, where he run afoul of an old-fashioned car horn.

Frankly, this is—aside from another instance of Bad Disney Pet Owners—another instance of Pluto’s being rather clever. He does some really good problem-solving in this short, and if physics says no to some of the solutions involved, well, see above about Disney cartoons and overthinking. So sure, he digs that hole awfully quickly, but his playacting is quite good, and he really sells “there’s something delicious in this hole.” Butch is fooled enough to keep digging even when it should have been trivially obvious that the hole was empty.

Honestly it’s not difficult to come across as smarter than Butch, because Butch is consistently shown as not that bright. Big and tough and thick as a brick. How smart the assorted antagonists are will vary from cartoon to cartoon, sometimes even by character. The most obvious example of this is Donald’s nephews. However, Butch is never smart. He’s dumb brawn to Pluto’s scrawny brains. Done well, this could be funny. Could be.

Strangely, multiple sources—mostly, no doubt, copying off one another—list Pluto as having initially stolen Butch’s bone. This is nonsense. It was Pluto’s first. We see him. He does what he can to get it back, but it was his to begin with. I’m not saying everyone is victim-blaming Pluto, and it’s likely a mistake from one person who wasn’t watching properly who spread it around to other sources in the incestuous way of online references. Especially online resources about obscure things. But I promise you, it was Pluto’s. You know, after it was the original cow or pig’s and all.

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