Original ‘National Lampoon’s Vacation’ Had Even More Gruesome Fate for Aunt Edna’s Dog

Ellen Griswold’s Aunt Edna doesn’t quite make it to her final destination in National Lampoon’s Vacation. She dies in her sleep halfway through the long drive, with the family tying her corpse to the roof of their station wagon before ditching her in a relative’s lawn chair.

As dark humor goes, it’s pretty bleak — but Edna had it good, compared to her yappy dog, Dinky. The pooch’s leash is tied to the bumper of the family station wagon, a fact that Chevy Chase’s Clark Griswold forgets as he sets off down the highway. An irate police trooper pulls Griswold over, pointing to the now-empty leash dangling from the rear bumper. “Poor little guy,” sighs the cop. “Probably kept up with you for a mile or so.”

A tragedy that would never happen in real life? 

Au contraire, director Harold Ramis told David Letterman while promoting the film in 1983, per Entertainment Weekly. “It’s apocryphal, but people, when they travel with their dogs, occasionally they just forget and leave them tied to the bumper, and they drive off down the road and start hearing strange noises,” Ramis claimed. “While we were shooting in Durango, Colorado, working out of a Holiday Inn, sure enough, someone saw a station wagon pulling out of the Holiday Inn with a dog tied to the bumper.”

Sounds fishy, noted a skeptical Letterman. “Did you actually see it, or did a ‘friend’ of yours see it?”

“No, it was definitely a confirmed sighting,” Ramis insisted, noting that the dog was remembered and untied before any damage was done.

Entertainment Weekly notes that Dinky got it even worse in Vacation ‘58, John Hughes’ short story published in a 1979 issue of National Lampoon. Here’s the original telling of Dinky’s fate — and you might want to look away if you’re a dog lover: “He was flat on his belly with his legs out to the sides and his neck stretched out, so that he looked a beagle version of a bear rug. There was a wide red trail leading up to his body.”

The cop’s reaction is even more forlorn in the story. “I had one of these when I was a boy,” he said with a sad smile. “From the looks of his foot pads, I’d say this little guy kept up with you for half a mile or so.”

Hughes’ original story had more plot points that were darker than the movie’s version, including:

• Like in the movie, Clark steals money from a hotel, but in the print version, the police get wise and there’s a high-speed chase down the highway. Rusty takes out one of the cop cars by tossing an ice chest out the window.
• A trip through the Yuma Proving Grounds results in the military firing missiles at the station wagon.
• It’s Disneyland, not Walley World, that’s closed, and Clark confronts the actual Walt Disney instead of stand-in Roy Walley. After giving him a chance to run for his life, Clark shoots the icon in the leg with his revolver. “Mom, Patty, Missy, Mark and I were cleared of conspiracy charges,” the story says from Rusty’s point of view. “They held Dad for attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, illegal use of a firearm, and two violations of the Beverly Hills noise code.”