‘Work like a dog’. ‘Dog tired’. ‘In the dog house’. ‘A dog-eat-dog world’. Common expressions I hear all the time to describe what must be an almost unbearable existence, a life of toil, fear, and retribution. A life unlike that of any of my pals.
At some other time or in some other place I suppose those descriptors might be, or have been, accurate. But in my neighborhood nothing could be farther from the truth. My pals and I are chronically unemployed, we get tired chasing one another around the park and squirrels around our back yards, our house is the same as our owner’s house, with certain accommodations to ensure maximum comfort and convenience, like the doggy door, and we get two square meals a day, neither of which contains even trace amounts of dog—though I understand that sort of thing is popular in Asia, (remind me not to go there.)
