Thread: Murray Ball creator of Footrot Flats Dies

Rip Murray Ball. Never did get to know dog's real name...

Great comic strip. Read all the footrot flats books. Had a lot of great laughs...

Rod

Grew up on it...had all the books as a kid...by all accounts he was a pretty good bloke. RIP.

Sad news. I still have all the books stored away somewhere (along with my Garfeild collection). My first puppy was a dead ringer for "Dog" and as a consequence was named after him.

For the younger members, some one had to do it.

Footrot Flats the dogs tail full movie - YouTube

New Zealand's second National Anthem.

Slice of Heaven - Dave Dobbyn - YouTube

Was reading about this earlier. There was a picture of Murray Ball and the dog that inspired the comic. It's real name was Finn.

Tom.

I had all the Footrot Flats books for many years. Valued them second only to my collection of Ned and His Neddy cartoons by Ken Maynard. The Ettamogah Pub. I sold the Footrot Flats book a while ago. Still have the Ned cartoons, about 2000 of them. Hard to find old copies of The Post magazine nowadays but still looking for the missing cartoons.

Like others had all the books. Our whole family loved them.

Growing up in the country meant we felt a lot of affinity even here in Oz. Probably the most similarity was a feral kitten I caught as a young 7 yr old up at our hay sheds. It ended up as "Puddy" in our house and was as close to "Horse" as you could get. Every dog we or one of our workmen had lived in fear of this cat. In fact so did we!

Even when she died at 17 we couldn't find it for weeks in summer until eventually we found her under some hydrandeas. Even rotting the dogs were still too scared to go near her.

I think I have a full set of the books, pull them out and have another read every so often. Another icon gone.