My Dogs are Barking

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Good afternoon, this is Santosh.

Hi, Santosh, how are you?

I am doing great. How are you doing?

Super duper. Where are you calling from?

I’m calling from Greenfield, Indiana.

Well, we’re delighted you called. What’s up?

My question is, I never heard anybody saying, my dogs are barking. That means my feet are tired. My dogs are barking, my feet are tired.

Yeah.

Where did you hear it?

Well, my son and his wife, they were in Germany this summer, and I went to visit them, and we did a lot of hiking and walking over there.

And at the end of the day, one of the evenings, my son had his feet propped up on the chair, and he smiled, and he said, my dogs are barking.

He said his wife always says that when her feet are tired, my dogs are barking.

Then I said, maybe because my daughter-in-law is pediatrician.

So I thought maybe this is a medical term.

And so I asked her that.

She said, no, it’s not a medical term.

I said, maybe then one of the kids was joking or whatever, you know.

So I thought I should call you.

Well, you came to the right place.

You did. You did.

And you will hear that expression. It is probably an example of rhyming slang, which is something that you hear in different parts of the world when people sort of jokingly speak in code by substituting words that rhyme with each other.

Wow.

The most famous rhyming slang you’ll hear about is the Cockney dialect of East London.

I see.

In that part of the world, sometimes you’ll hear people, instead of using the word head, they’ll use the expression loaf of bread.

I see.

So they might say, Grant, use your loaf.

Right, because they rhyme it, and then they cut off part of the rhyming expression.

Exactly.

So in this case, they rhymed it with what, Martha?

They rhymed feet with dog’s meat.

Oh, so it has nothing to do with the barking at all.

Well, it kind of does later, right?

Well, yeah, yeah, because dog’s meat got shortened to feet, and then it’s kind of a joke, you know, because if your dogs are complaining, if your feet are complaining, they’re going to be barking and growling and err, you know.

That’s what dogs do.

Prop me up.

But why would they rhyme it with dog’s meat?

For dog’s meat, rhyming it with feet, my theory, Grant, and it’s just a theory, is that it’s the idea of stinky feet.

Well, the reason I ask is because at one time in London, it was common for dog’s meat men to travel the streets.

And they would shout, you know, as peddlers would at the time, dog’s meat, dog’s meat, and travel down the street.

And you would come out and you would buy usually what amounted to old boiled horse meat from this guy to feed your pets, to feed your dog and to feed your cat.

And you’ll find this character in poetry and song.

You’ll find this guy mentioned in novel after novel.

He often shows up as a kind of almost mythical character in newspaper stories.

So it would be perfectly normal for someone to rhyme feet with dog’s meat at the time because he was a common character.

Dog’s meat was just a phrase that everyone would know.

And then when it made it over to the United States, we don’t really have the barking show up until about 100 years ago in the United States until we find somebody saying, my dogs are barking, meaning my feet are barking.

But dogs meeting feet goes back up much further than that.

How interesting.

So the dogs meet guys’ feet were probably smelly and tired at the end of the day too, right?

And you know what’s even more interesting?

And this kind of is a weird part of the story.

Often these carts that would pull the boiled horse meat were pulled by dogs.

Man.

They would hitch up any old kind of dog, and you find stories talking about the fact that you could be the tiniest dog or the biggest dog, sometimes hitched up side by side, pulling these carts.

Wow, do you see where you sent us, Santosh?

I never could have imagined this.

Well, anyway, it’s a long and complicated story.

See, I’m glad I called you.

Yeah, so you’re going to use that expression in good health now, right?

Yes, I am.

Yes.

Thank you very, very much.

You’re welcome.

Thank you for calling, Santosh.

Bye-bye.

Yeah, pleasure to talk to you, too.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

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