Holy Cow!

by Boze Hadleigh

  In time, RCA advertised their Color Trak television and video equipment using Nipper’s son Chipper. (Notice that nearly all canine—and other animal—mascots are devised as male.)

  Mack Trucks, with their snub-nosed hoods and ability to perform well under duress, were nicknamed bulldogs in World War I. In 1922 the company adopted a bulldog as their advertising mascot and in the ’30s, a bulldog became the hood ornament on Mack trucks.

  Greyhound Bus began in 1914, when many US roads were unpaved. The company’s bus (singular) was painted gray because any other color would look dirty after hours on the road. When somebody remarked that the bus resembled a greyhound streaking across the landscape, the company’s founder chose the slogan “Ride the Greyhound” and adopted the speedy animal as its symbol.

  Bristol Laboratories employed a coughing dog to pitch Naldecon-CX cough syrup, to get rid of “barking coughs.” The American Brake Shoe Company used Stopper, a long-haired terrier shown skidding to a stop in its ads. Then there was the Ken-L-Ration Dog. It makes sense having a dog, albeit not a real one, advertise dog food, even if it pops its eyes and lip-smacks its tongue anticipating just one specific brand of dog food.

  Dalmatians were integral to pre-motorized fire departments. Running ahead of horse-drawn firefighters, they would clear the way for them to reach fires as quickly as possible. Honoring Dalmatians’ past bravery and service, many fire departments still use them as mascots.

  Hush Puppies

  In the Southern US, catfish has traditionally been served with fried cornmeal biscuits. Hush puppies came from the latter’s batter (deep-fried). In the period of poverty following the Civil War, mothers often served up bits of fried corn batter to quiet the hungry cries of children and dogs, often adding, “Hush, child,” or “Hush, puppy.”

  The cornmeal morsels were also tossed to noisy dogs by hunters to quiet them down—“Hush, puppy!”

  The South also had a salamander called a hush puppy, sometimes called a water dog or water puppy. Only the very poor were reduced to eating these amphibians; reportedly, some whispered among themselves, “Hush, don’t tell anyone.”

  Puppy. . .

  The word puppy may derive from the French poupee, doll or toy, from a Latin word meaning doll or girl that also evolved into poppet and is related to puppet. Once upon a time, a puppy show was a puppet show. Because of the sexist assignment of dogs to males and cats to females, in Britain until recently a puppy was a young man, often arrogant or one who conceitedly corrects his elders. In the United States, puppy may be used in a specifically ironic way, as in “He is one sick puppy.”

  To be or act puppyish is usually to be playful and applies to boys as well as girls, unlike kittenish. “The evening’s still a pup” means the evening is young. Puppy love (and the less frequent calf love) is associated with adolescents and immature first loves or crushes. Puppy fat usually disappears at or soon after adolescence.

  To “sell someone a pup” is to gyp them by misrepresenting something.

  A pup tent is an American term for a small—thus, pup—tent for one or two people that’s triangular and has no side walls.

  Why does a mother dog circle several times before settling down to feed her blind and deaf newborns? A prime reason is to spread her scent and let the pups know where and how far away she is. Dogs’ habit of circling before lying down is partly territorial and harkens back to life in the wild and tamping down a sleeping area among leaves and tall grass.

  Barking Up the Wrong Tree

  This phrase harkens back to 19th-century North America, when raccoon-hunting was common. Hunters would scour the woods at night, stalking the nocturnal creatures whose name comes from the Algonquin aroughcun. Dogs were used to pick up the scent of the frightened prey, who would scurry up the nearest tree.

  Barking dogs standing with their paws against a tree trunk gave away the presence of a raccoon above. A hunter would typically climb the tree to grab the prize (fortunately, the poor creatures have sharp claws), but if for some reason the raccoon wasn’t there—perhaps having escaped to the branch of a neighboring tree—the hunter would decide or announce that his dog had been barking up the wrong tree.

  Davy Crockett was credited with originating the regional colloquialism, but more likely he popularized it. A variation appeared in An Account of Colonel Crockett’s Tour to the North and Down East: “Some people are going to try to hunt for themselves . . . (but) seem to be barking up the wrong sapling.”

  The canine employed was often a coonhound, a specifically bred black-and-tan American dog. In Sketches and Eccentricities of Col. David Crockett of West Tennessee, Crockett described it as “the meanest thing on earth, an old coon dog barking up a tree.” (Coon was also a derogatory nickname for a black man.)

  A Shaggy Dog Story

  This phrase meaning a story that’s hard to believe derives from a real one retailed at fashionable London dinner parties during the 19th century. It concerned a Park Lane resident who lost his beloved shaggy dog while walking it through Hyde Park. He prominently advertised his loss in The Times. A sympathetic American in New York City read about the ad and determined to seek out a shaggy dog matching the description and present it to the bereaved gentleman the next time he visited London.

  When the Yank rang the doorbell of the Englishman’s mansion, he encountered a snooty butler who glanced at the dog and pronounced, “Not as shaggy as that, sir.” Members of London’s upper crust enjoyed the story but weren’t sure they entirely believed it.

  (The Shaggy D.A. (1976), not the first Disney movie about a man in dog’s clothing, was also hard to believe.)

  Hound. . .

  Hounds were bred for hunting, particularly via their sharp sense of smell. Before the concept of pets, dogs were expected to earn their keep—usually by helping humans hunt other animals—just as domestic cats were primarily mousers, to help keep the grain supply intact. A deerhound, for instance, is a big, rough-haired breed that resembles a greyhound. In time, hound became a reference to dogs in general. (Dog in German is Hund.)

  Because hounds were so dogged (!) in their quest for prey, to hound became synonymous with persistent pursuit, or what might now be called harassment. That word derives from the French harasser—to set, sic, or sick (a dialect variation of seek) a dog on another creature, by way of the Germanic hare, a yell egging a dog on to attack.

  A publicity hound persistently seeks the limelight. It was often applied to Paris Hilton with or without her chihuahua in hand or handbag.

  Hound is also used in the names of assorted dogfish, for example the nurse hound, a large spotted fish found in the northeast Atlantic. The name is from nusse, a Middle English word of unknown origin, and has nothing to do with doctors’ underrated assistants. Nurse, an Australian shark also known as the grey nurse, is the ironic moniker for a razor-teethed predator found in shallow inshore waters.

  Chow

  A chow is a thickly furred Chinese dog with a bluish-black tongue whose tail curls over its back. In Mandarin Chinese chow means to fry or cook, as in chow mein, from chao mian, fried flour or noodles. In Cantonese Chinese chow means food—chow dogs were originally bred for food and emphatically named chow chow.

  In 18th-century America chow became occasional slang for food (“let’s chow down,” etc.). A chowhound is an enthusiastic eater, as one dictionary kindly puts it, and has nothing to do with chowderhead, US slang for an unintelligent person.

  More Mascots

  In 1961 the Wolverine Shoe & Tanning Company introduced a line of soft-soled shoes called Hush Puppies, the name indicating both quietness and the suppleness of puppies. To advertise them they chose a placid bassett hound. (Bassett comes from the diminutive of French bas, meaning low, for the dog, besides its droopy ears and long body, has short legs. A wolverine, its name derived from wolf, is a sturdy short-legged carnivore found in the forests and tundra of North America and Eurasia.)

  Another bassett hound, famous on the East Coast, was A
xelrod, the mascot for Flying A Gasoline. The pooch wore a worried expression that tied in with the company slogan, “When it comes to your car . . . Ooooh, do we worry!” (Ooooh, brother.)

  In 1963 Quaker Oats hired animator Jay Ward, creator of Rocky (the flying squirrel) and Bullwinkle (the big moose), to advertise its sugary new cereal, Cap’n Crunch. The befuddled captain’s first mate was named Seadog and was a sea dog. The pair, with the aid of a crew of children, spent their time averting the attempts of dastardly pirate Jean LaFoote to steal their cereal.

  The controversial Spuds MacKenzie debuted in 1983, highlighting and high-life-ing Bud Light beer. He was often seen partying poolside with young beauties collectively named the Spudettes. Spuds ignited sales of Bud Light but became too popular with teenagers and was later drafted to warn the public about the dangers of drinking and driving. A fleeting scandal erupted when it was discovered that the dog who played him was a female. By then, most people knew that Lassie had often been enacted by a canine laddie.

  The Poodle Cut

  The story goes that in the 1950s some French female aristocrat was giving a party and had her hairdresser cut and style her poodle’s hair into a fluffy bob with bangs (fringe in England). The pooch was the hit of the party, inspiring the hostess to have her hair cut and styled the same way. The boyish ’do spread through France and Italy—Gina Lollobrigida was one of the first stars to wear it—then arrived in the States and was taken up by women of all ages, including a style-conscious but mature Joan Crawford. The most famous example of the poodle cut was Audrey Hepburn, specifically in the 1953 film Roman Holiday, in which her character, a princess, has her humdrum long hair shorn by an Italian coiffeur into the perky, fashionable new ’do.

  Poodle. . .

  The phrase as pampered, happy or as comfy as a poodle on a pillow may or may not have been conceived by ex-actress Jacqueline Susann, whose book Every Night, Josephine, about her beloved black poodle, sold poorly. It was then she decided to throw all the stops out and write a novel called The Valley of the Dolls.

  Poodles have long been considered foppish, partly due to their mincing gait. The styles in which their curly fur is sometimes clipped often look risible but reflect more on the owner than the choice-less dog. In fact, many consider the poodle the most intelligent breed, perhaps a reason it seldom becomes aggressive. It is, however, sensitive and can become jealous of children in the human family.

  Over the last century or so, especially outside France and Germany, the poodle has become associated with women, and poodlefaker is a now-obsolete British term for a man who cultivates women’s company—with no real interest in their pooches (the word “pooch,” though said to have originated in the 1920s, is of unknown origin).

  The expression “I’m nobody’s poodle” isn’t a canine lament, but a person’s (usually a man’s) assertion that he has a mind of his own or is not easily led by others. Woof!

  The French poodle is internationally famous, yet the breed most likely began in Germany, then was taken to France. Its name is from German Pudelhund, from puddeln, to splash in water (related to English puddle), for the poodle is a water dog.

  A mix lately gaining popularity is a schnoodle, a cross between a schnauzer and a poodle. (The former derives from Schnauze, German for snout.) Guess what hybrid a piggle is? A pit bull and a beagle.

  Bark

  Country singer Mel Tillis once asked, “How can a dog’s bark be worse than his bite? His bark don’t hurt you none.” For humans, however, it’s a valid expression for somebody who may seem gruff—like, say, Mary Richards’s boss Lou Grant—but who’s really a pussycat.

  Tillis also explained that as a boy he was a big fan of Lassie and wanted a collie, until relatives said that if he got one, people might be apt to say, “Here comes Mel and collie.”

  The phrase “All the dogs are barking” signifies that a piece of news is being widely disseminated.

  The phrase “Why keep a dog and bark oneself?” means, for example, Why hire a cleaning lady and then do the dusting oneself?

  Negative Expressions

  Unlike a cat, the more gregarious dog will voluntarily follow its master’s steps. But in the past, when society chose to view even domesticated animals negatively rather than appreciatively, this touching fact yielded the plaintive expression to dog one’s steps. The 1966 Dictionary of American Idioms gave this dated example: “All the time he was in Havana, Castro’s police were dogging his steps.”

  “Give a dog a bad name and hang him” indicated how hard it is to alter a bad reputation. Longman’s Dictionary of English Idioms explains that “If a dog is said to bite or be bad-tempered, it might as well be killed because no one will trust it any more.”

  The happily obsolete expression “Any stick will serve to beat a dog” indicates that one can always find fault with someone if one wants to, any excuse will do. A kinder expression, to help a lame dog over a stile, meant to aid a struggling person (a stile was steps set into a wall or fence to let people climb over).

  To throw something to the dogs is to sacrifice something.

  “As sick as a dog” comes from the false assumption that a dog will eat anything thrown its way.

  “The tail wagging the dog” is when a minor aspect of something has a disproportionate or major influence.

  “To let sleeping dogs lie” is akin to not waking a sleeping dragon, to refrain from provocation, to leave well enough alone and avoid trouble.

  “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks” isn’t true and seems to shift the effects of human aging onto canines.

  More positively, to “Call off the dogs” is to abandon an audit or investigation when it’s leading nowhere—as when huntsmen called off their dogs when they’d gotten hold of a false scent.

  “Does a dog have fleas?” means “Does a bear do it in the woods?” (The opposite of “Does a snake do push-ups?”)

  CATS

  Swing a Cat

  “Not enough room to swing a cat” means too small a space. Although the term’s visual image now seems bizarre, even humorous, it was once all too literal. As we know, some cultures elevated the cat while others denigrated it. Ancient Egypt literally adored felines, but Christianity traditionally deprecated cats, one reason being their reputation as “familiars” of witches (usually women practicing non-Church-approved remedies and rituals). Thus, hundreds of thousands of cats were hung or burned at the stake along with their female owners over the centuries.

  There are two explanations for this phrase. A cat-o’-nine-tails was a rope whip with nine knotted cords in it, used to flog British sailors. The punishment (discontinued in 1875) left scars on a man’s back resembling cat scratches and took place on-deck because inside a cabin there was “not enough room to swing a cat-o’-nine-tails” (originally three cords).

  One of many inhumane “sports” in medieval Europe was swinging cats by their tails to serve as moving overhead targets for archers at fairs, festivals, and holiday events. If a given event was particularly crowded, it was sometimes reported there wasn’t enough room to “swing a cat.”

  Other “sports” included cat tossing and cat burning. Not wishing to possibly undermine its own agenda, the Church didn’t interfere with such sadism. This was true of both major Christian sects; a 1554 engraving depicts a cat, dressed as a priest, that was hung at an anti-Catholic demonstration in London.

  A Cat-in-Hell’s Chance

  Like the also obsolete a dog’s chance or a “Chinaman’s” chance, this phrase means no chance at all. But it’s incomplete. Originally it was “no more chance than a cat in hell without claws.” Cats have far less chance anywhere without their claws. Interesting that theirs are retractable, while dogs’ claws aren’t. Unfortunately, those who dislike cats view this positive trait as a negative. Napoleon, a known ailurophobe (he once screamed when a cat entered his tent in Egypt), called retractile claws a proof of perfidy.

  As most cat lovers know, declawing a cat is no kindness.
It’s less like clipping fingernails than amputating fingers up to the first knuckle (visit www.pawproject.org).

  More Than One Way to Skin a Cat

  Cat lovers, relax. This phrase stating there’s more than one way to perform a task or achieve a goal has nothing to do with Muffy, Bitsy, or Thomasina. It’s about catfish, a fish easily caught but not easily skinned. The several ways to do it include dropping one into boiling water before unpeeling it.

  Why was it called a “catfish”? Because somebody with wretched eyesight thought its “whiskers”—barbels, from the Latin barba, or beard—made the homely scavenger resemble a cat (by contrast, Leonardo Da Vinci pronounced the cat a living work of art). As to why the phrase-ending was shortened from catfish to cat, one can only speculate that some ailurophobe was being dogmatic.

  Traditionalist male authors often treated cats and supposed feline (read: feminine) traits more harshly than they did dogs. An example is a sentence from Part III of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883), his most famous philosophical work: “For I would sooner have even noise and thunder and weather curses than this suspicious, dubious cat-like stillness, and also among human beings I hate the most all pussyfooters and half-and-halfers and doubting, hesitating, drifting clouds.” (What a sourpuss!)

  Cat. . .

  A catsuit is a skin-hugging one-piece item of womenswear that includes pants. It’s usually meant to be provocative, more so if made of leather, vinyl, or rubber—remember Michelle Pfeiffer as the Catwoman? Or, earlier, Julie Newmar? Either would have stopped traffic (by the way, America’s bumper-to-bumper traffic is Britain’s nose-to-tail traffic).

  A catcall is a whistle or shout expressing disapproval. The term dates back to the 1600s. (Contrast it with a wolf whistle.)

  The defining quality of a catwalk is its narrowness, whether a platform for models to parade on or a vertiginous walkway or skinny bridge in an industrial installation or elsewhere—cats of course being known for their agility, straight-ahead gait, and lack of fear of heights (except when stuck in a tree).