What's The Difference Between Goofy and Pluto?

This is a great question and one that just came up in my household. My four and a half year old son has taken note of this difference. We are getting ready to go to Disney World in March and we got to talking about the characters he would want to see and he ask me why the dogs were different. I was floored at his observations. I think Disney is simly trying to offer variety in the characters. My son thinks they are just different breeds of dogs. Sound good to me. The one strange thing I remember is that Goofy's girlfriend is Clarabel the cow. How is that possible?

I think it has to do with the personalities Disney attaches to the 2 characters: Though both Goofy and Pluto are Mickey's best pals, Goofy is portrayed as an absent-minded FRIEND of Mickey who always gets into trouble (a more human-like trait). Meanwhile, Pluto is portrayed as a loyal PET (a more animal-like trait). Obviously their appearance and movements have to match their human-like and animal-like characters respectively.

The thought that jumps to my mind is that Pluto has an owner and Goofy does not have an owner. I'm trying to think back to childhood, and I was not a big fan of Goofy; however, if memory serves me they dipicted Goofy as having a son, mother, etc; whereas, Pluto was Mickey's dog. I guess you could think of it as them showing the dog world from to side a dog having antomony (being self-sufficient) as Goofy was versus a dog being dependent upon his owner like Pluto was on Mickey.