George Rodrigue painted Hoppy Poppy during a period in his career when he began to conceive of the Blue Dog in new ways. During the mid-to-late 1990s, Rodrigue painted several canvases that humanized the Blue Dog, specifically representing the dog as a man. This style of work was heavily featured in the 1999 book Blue Dog Man, which explores how the artist and his creation evolved in tandem. Hoppy Poppy demonstrates how Rodrigue often depicted the humanization of the Blue Dog through clothes like the shirt, tie, and sports coat the dog wears in the painting. This masculine depiction of the Blue Dog is complemented by the yellow poppies Rodrigue has painted along the green background of the canvas. As with many of Rodrigue’s Blue Dog paintings, part of Hoppy Poppy’s charm is the unanswerable questions it poses to viewers.