Go Dog, Go!  (Part I)

The common word for members of the canine species is “dog.”  In your compiler’s part of the South, it’s always pronounced “dawg,” as in that elegant and refined University of Georgia chant which echoes throughout Sanford Stadium and occasional lesser sites throughout the autumn of each year, “GO DAWGS!   SIC ‘EM!   WOOF, WOOF, WOOF, WOOF!”

No matter what misinformation a cat-person might try to palm off on you, dog is man’s best friend – has been for eons and eons.  And our best friend figures largely in the language of the South, which is the subject of this particular post.  By the way, the only cat metaphors your compiler can  think of offhand are both negative —  something’s “high as a cat’s back,” usually in price, or “meaner than fresh cat…  ahm”… well, you know.

Dog metaphors abound in our region “That dog will hunt!” means something on the order of, “That’s a great idea which I believe is a wonderful solution to this situation.”

“I’m going to see a man about a dog,” is usually the indirect answer to the fairly direct question, “Where are you going.”   It’s a polite way of saying, “None of your damn business,” which we would never say, being far too polite.

“That’d scare a wild dog off a gut bucket!” means something is incredibly ugly or frightening.  Someone with the “morals of a yard dog” is generally not looked upon too kindly by her genteel neighbors.  

And dealing with folks who just don’t get the job done – generally through a lack of ambition or trying – is “like going hunting and having to tote the dog,” to use the words of the late, legendary William Tate (1903-1980), longtime Dean of Men at the University of Georgia, who employed it in discussing boys who would not study.

There must be a thousand, literally, many of them not necessarily Southern.  Following is a goodly sample of some others in common usage:

– Dog tired

– Worked like a dog

– Barking up the wrong tree

– That’s the tail wagging the dog

– In the doghouse

– Let sleeping dogs lie

– You can’t teach an old dog new tricks

– Yellow Dog Democrat

– Puttin’ on the dog

– Biting the hand that feeds you

– One sick puppy

– His bark is worse than his bite

– Let’s at least throw him a bone

– Raining cats and dogs

– Dog and pony show

– Dog Days of Summer

– Dog-gone!

– It’s a dog-eat-dog world

– I don’t have a dog in that fight.

– The hair of the dog that bit you
Isn’t it amazing how widely man’s best friend is represented in our language?  As Jed Clampett of The Bevely Hillbillies fame would likely have said, “Woooo!  Doggies!”    And please tune in next week for what is perhaps the best two dog stories your compiler has ever heard in Go Dog, Go! (Part II.)