Dogged

Dogs have been part of human society for so long that they’ve changed our language. You can, like a bloodhound, use your dogged determination to track down all the dog-related terms, but you’ll probably get dog-tired and start dogging it. That would be a doggone shame. But one of the things you’d probably nose out is that in English, at least, “dog” carries utterly flexible connotations. Sometimes dogs are well-respected, as when “dogged” means determined. Sometimes the dogs are relatively neutral, depending of course on how you feel about low-art poetry like doggerel. And then you can find references where being a dog is clearly negative, as in various attributes of “…like a dog.” In the film Winter’s Bone there’s a particularly powerful line when Ree (the heroine) describes her family’s impending homelessness as being forced to “live in a field like dogs.”

You can find similar canine inconsistency in other parts of the same movie — the Dolly family keeps a dog outside on quite a short chain that looks at best inhumane. But they’re careful to feed that dog. And Ree’s little brother Sonny brings home a stray puppy, names him Peanut Butter, and it appears the pup is on the cusp of pet-hood.

People love dogs, revile dogs, fear dogs, and in some cultures even eat dogs (or so I’ve read). Some dogs perform useful work, while it’s impossible, with some others, to imagine them doing anything useful. It’s not always the dogs’ fault; sometimes they wind up as family pets in places where the usful work they were bred to do is just not available. Our current dog Hayley is a terrier who would become a ground-based cruise missile seeking out mice and similar pess — if we lived on a farm. In the past we’ve had dogs that would happily herd our sheep — had we had any sheep.

I wonder sometimes if we’re doing dogs a disservice by making them nothing more than pets from whom we want just companionship. They all seem to be quite good at that, but they’re (often) capable of more. It’s hard to tell what their preferences would be, should they be given the option. Hayley, for instance, loves to chase squirrels (and the occasional rabbit) out of her back yard. But in the main, her favorite thing is to curl up next to whichever member of her family is sitting still for a while. That, of course, and plotting to score an extra treat here and there.

Tales from the Forest

Dog was unusually excited when she knocked on Hare’s door that day.

“Guess what!” she said, tail wagging at full speed. “Guess what! I’m going to be in a play! In the town!”

“That’s great,” said Hare, who hadn’t had a chance to guess after all. He had been going to guess that Ferret was going on vacation by himself for a while and wouldn’t be bothering Dog for rides. “Oh well, woulda been wrong anyway,” he said to himself. Hare loved guessing games.

“It’s going to be in the library,” said Dog, “Sally and Andy are both going to be in the play, and Andy said I can come too and play the part of the dog!”

“Do you have any lines?” asked Hare, mostly to be polite.

“I do, I do!” said Dog. “I have to say ‘grrr’ when Andy taps my foot one time, and ‘woof’ when he taps me two times. We’ve practiced it and everything. I’m going to go see Beaver to figure out what I’m REALLY going to say; the humans will just hear ‘grr’ and ‘woof’ either way, y’know.”

“Even Andy?” asked Hare. “You spend a lot of time with that boy; hasn’t he been able to learn to talk yet? Or even listen?”

“No,” said Dog, shaking her head sadly. “He’s just too dumb. They all are. But he’s my friend anyway. It’s cute the way they try so hard at things.”

“Can I come see your play?” asked Hare.

“Sort of,” said Dog. “It’s in a building in the town, and you might be too big to sneak in, Hare. But I’ve seen that building, and it’s got lots of windows, so you could stay outside and look in. And I bet you could hear everything just as well.”

“Huh?” said Hare, cupping his paw behind his ear, “what’s that you say?”

“Very funny,” said Dog.

“I had to try,” said Hare. “It might have really been funny.”

“I guess,” said Dog. “Anyway, Hare, I just wanted to tell you my news. I’m going over to Beaver’s to find some good lines.”

“Thanks for letting me know,” said Hare. “When is the play, and which building is it?”

“It’s in a couple of days,” said Dog. “I’ll tell Magpie about it and she’ll let everybody know how to find the right building.”

“OK,” said Hare, “see you later, Dog.” But Dog was already trotting off to see Beaver.

Beaver was sitting outside in the sun when Dog arrived with her news. “Why yes, I can help you find something good to say,” he said. “Let’s go into my library and see what we can find.”

Once in the library, Beaver said “we have a lot of choices, Dog. Would you like to say something well known from a famous play? Something like ‘to be or not to be, that is the question’? Or maybe something from a notorious historical figure. Some of them are even dogs — Rufus is known for saying ‘I have not yet begun to chew’ — he’s the one who discovered dinosaur bones about a century ago. Then there’s Trixie, who said ‘give me liberty or on second thought, I just noticed those cookies; I’ll go out later.’ Everybody knows those. Or you could go with something more obscure. Not many know this, but Bear has a cousin who lives near a town down south. She once found a pile of fruit out in the back of a citrus grove and Bear says after she ate it all she declared ‘it was the best of limes, it was the worst of limes.’ I’ve always thought that had a nice ring to it.”

“Those are all good ideas,” said Dog thoughtfully. “I have two lines to say. The first one I have to say softly, because it’s supposed to sound like a growl to the people.The second one I can speak up more — they’ll just hear ‘woof.’”

“How about two quotes that go together, in that case?” said Beaver. “Remember that story about Blinken the horse? He was really well known for making speeches, back in the day, and also for not knowing how to count very high. There was that speech he made where he wanted to say ‘eleven years back’, but he forgot the name of that number so he started ‘four more than seven years ago’.” Then later on in the same speech he said ‘all men have inflated egos’, which is quite true, in my experience.”

“Mine too,” said Dog, “but it doesn’t seem like a very original thing to say.”

“Hey I know,” said Beaver, you remember the Tern family from over at the seashore?”

“You mean those three brothers, Hugh, Hairpin, and 3Point?”

“Precisely,” said Beaver. “Well wouldn’t you know it, but they came visiting a couple of weeks ago, and one of them — I think it was Hairpin — said something that might be a good thing for your loud line.”

“Okay, let me hear it.”

“He said ‘bah humbug’.”

“‘Bah humbug’? What the heck does that mean?”

“I don’t have any idea,” said Beaver, “I just thought it sounded good.”

“Hmmm,” said Dog. She tried saying ‘bah humbug’ a few times at different volumes, and finally nodded her head. “I like it,” she said. “‘Bah humbug’ it is. And for my growl line I think I want to go back to one you already mentioned: ‘it was the best of limes, it was the worse of limes’.”

“An excellent choice,” said Beaver. “Somehow I feel those two are related.”

“How can they be related?” asked Dog. “Isn’t one from a bear and the other from a bird?”

“That is ostensibly the case,” said Beaver, “nevertheless I sense a certain ineffable connection.”

Dog considered it carefully. “Bah humbug,” said Dog.

Photography

These are photos of My Dogs (or in some cases, photos of dogs who look as much like the dogs I’ve lived with as I could find). Spot goes back decades; I couldn’t find any photos of him — but the dog below looks practically identical.

The dog I miss the most is Zack; he was kind and gentle to such a degree he made friends with skunks on two occasions (probably saving both of us from being sprayed). Our dogs have tended to live unusually long lives; Cricket in particular lived to be over 20, which is quite a lot for a terrier mix.

Phrase of the Day

“That neighborhood is going to the dogs” means that it’s deteriorating. It doesn’t have anything to do with real dogs; it’s the equivalent of saying “that neighborhood is going to rack and ruin,” which doesn’t have anything to do with an actual rack.

In the case of “rack and ruin”, though, “rack” is really “wrack”, which comes from an Old English word. Although actually which Old English word it comes from isn’t entirely obvious. It might be “wrǽc”, which meant vengeance or retribution. Or it might be “wracu”, which meant persecution; sort of “wrǽc” from the other side. It could even be from “wrecan”, which meant “to drive”, and from which we got the word “wreak”, as in “wreaking havoc”, which would also result in “rack and ruin”. Or “rack” might not be Old English at all; it might be from “wrec”, the Anglo-Norman ancestor of “wreck”.

It all depends on what you think “rack and ruin” is really supposed to mean. If it’s just repeating two synonyms for something falling apart, “rack” is probably related to “wreck”. But if the two words are different, and the phrase is about a process where something is damaged and then abandoned, then “rack” is probably related to “wreak”.

But then again, if the phrase has anything to do with the intentions of people involved, then “rack” is more likely to mean something about either persecution or retribution.

In any case, none of this explains anything about dogs. People have been saying “going to the dogs” for centuries. “One is coloured, another is foxt, a third is gone to the dogs” is from the early 1600s, and Shakespeare has MacBeth say “Throw physic to the dogs, I’ll none of it.”

Medieval dinners featured both humans and dogs, who got all the scraps. So maybe that’s where the expression comes from. Except that when dinner scraps and a dog come together, slow deterioration isn’t really involved. There used to be another expression, though: “cast to the dogs” — which is more likely to mean “discarding something you don’t want.” That seems to be what happened to the explanation for why “going to the dogs” means deteriorating, because nobody seems to be able to find it.