173: Marmaduke, you goof, you've done it again

Explanation
The original panel's punchline was simple - Marmaduke wore the muzzle because he was on a diet. The single line of dialogue is rewritten to be much slightly darker, and to reference one of Marmaduke's two defining plot threads, as mentioned below. The author's notes thus reference Dysfunctional Family Circus, which similarly deconstructed Family Circus strips.

The author writes
Maybe she's exaggerating, maybe not. In any case, I've taken one of this strip's many, many "Marmaduke is too big" jokes and deconstructed it. Yeah, it's no Dysfunctional Family Circus, but I think it's up there.

Original strip: Marmaduke, 2017-03-30

Transcript
(Marmaduke is wearing a muzzle, to the apparent confusion of Barbara's neighbor) Barbara: "The other dogs are much smaller than he, so we put this muzzle on him in hopes that he wouldn't accidentally eat them.")