walk the dog
v. phr.— «Another one is a sports term known as “walked the dog.” When a reader shared that one with me, it actually was the second time I’d heard it. The first time was from my wife’s cousin, Tony, who was excited about a big win that was produced by the 12-year-old-girls’ softball team he coached. “Aw, man, we walked the dog on that other team,” he said.» —“Walked the dog has me bumfuzzled” by Bernie Delinski Times Daily (Florence, Alabama) Feb. 21, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Jim in Columbia, South Carolina, has noticed sportscasters’ use of the phrase on the season with reference to a period of time. This construction shows up in the sports pages as early as the 1880s, first referring to a team’s revenue and...
In an 1899 contest sponsored by a literary magazine, a reader proposed the word whifflement to mean “an object of small importance.” This is part of a complete episode.
Related
too bad it’s not as colorful as the bicyclist ‘walk the dog’, from “faire pisser le chien” — (French) to take the dog out for a leak, to go for an easy ride usually the day after a brutally hard ride.
I heard it used once in a conversation about testing software. By context, it seemed to mean going through all the motions OR a parade of the software functions. Like at a dog show.