(83) Like a Dog with Two Tails

Our dogs are so much a part of our lives, so much of who we are that over time we have embedded them into our language. I was thinking about this on the way to work this morning and tried to come up with all of the dog idioms I could think of. When I had a fairly good list(10) I decided to look on line when I got home. There are so many, most of which I had heard of and a whole lot that were new to me. I thought this would be fun to share and interesting to see if anyone can come up with others.
I've put some of the definitions for idioms that were unfamiliar to me. The * are my new favorites.

*Dog eat dog world
Bring the dog to a heel
*Better to be a head of a dog than a tail of a lion(It is better to be the leader of a less prestigious group than to be a subordinate in a more prestigious one)
Be like a dog with a bone(to refuse to stop thinking about or talking about a subject)
*Be like a dog with two tails
A barking dog never bites (someone who threatens but doesn't carry out the threat)
Have a dog's chance
A dog in a Manger(someone who keeps something they don't want in order to prevent others from having it)
Tail wagging the dog
Putting on the dog(make things extra special)
Working like a dog
Sick as a dog
Top dog
Lucky dog
Raining cats and dogs
Dog tired or my dogs are tired
Every dog has its day
Hair of the dog (to have another drink after a bad night of drinking)ie.. "I need some hair of the dog that bit me"
Dog and pony show
If you lie down with the dogs you will get up with fleas
The dog days
Gone to the dogs
*Meaner than a junk yard dog
*See a man about a dog(don't want to tell where you are really going)
Call off the dogs
Dirty dogs
Shaggy dog story
*Give a dog a bad name(quick to blame)
There's life in the old dog yet
Can't teach an old dog new tricks
Why keep a dog and bark yourself? (you should not do something you have hired someone else to do)
Love me, love my dog
Let sleeping dogs lie
*Like a blind dog in a meat market (out of control)

So if dogs are so embedded in our language it must mean that our society has certain beliefs about their behaviors and or actions. From these idioms I believe we think dogs are... Tenacious, lazy, visual with emotions, aggressively successful, surface, protective, routinized.

Here at home...
It was raining so hard this morning when I got up that Beeks and I had to postpone our walkabout until I got home from work. He was so excited to get out and run around he was like a dog with two tails. I've posted the hedge roses that I wrote about in yesterday's post.