the dog ate my homework miss

Where Did The Phrase “The Dog Ate My Homework” Come From?

Dogs are known as man’s best friend. Dogs keep us safe, are hard workers … and can provide a handy excuse in a pinch. Maybe that’s why versions of the classic expression the dog ate my homework have been around for hundreds of years.

Today, the dog ate my homework is used as a stock example of the kind of silly excuses schoolchildren give for why their work isn’t finished. Very rarely do people say, “the dog ate my homework” and expect it to be taken literally; they use the expression as an example of a typically flimsy excuse.

So where did the phrase come from?

Forrest Wickman, a writer for Slate , describes the legend of the 6th-century Saint Ciarán of Clonmacnoise as the alleged first recorded “the dog ate my homework” story. According to the tale, Saint Ciarán had a tame young fox that would take his writings to his master for him. One day, the fox grew up and decided to eat the leather strap binding the writings together instead. Still, this tale is more Garden-of-Eden parable and less terrible schoolchild excuse.

The notion that dogs will eat just about anything, including paper, turns up in lots of stories over the centuries. An example comes from The Humors of Whist , published in 1808 in Sporting Magazine . In the story, the players are sitting around playing cards when one of them remarks that their companion would have lost the game had the dog not eaten the losing card. Good boy.

Some attribute the creation of the dog ate my homework to a joke that was going around at the beginning of the 20th century. In a tale found as far back as an 1894 memoir by Anglican priest Samuel Reynolds Hole, a preacher gives a shortened version of a sermon because a dog got into his study and ate some of the pages he had written. However, the clerk loved it because they had been wanting the preacher to shorten his sermons for years.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary , the first example of the dog ate my homework excuse in print can be found in a speech given by retiring headmaster James Bewsher in 1929 and published in the Manchester Guardian : “It is a long time since I have had the excuse about the dog tearing up the arithmetic homework.” The way this comment is phrased suggests that the whole dog ate my homework story had been around for some time before it was put in print.

When was the word homework created?

But in order for a dog to eat homework specifically, homework had to be invented (oh, and how we wish it hadn’t been). True, the word homework , as in what we call today housework , appears as early as 1653. But homework , as in school exercises to be done at home, isn’t found until 1852. Once we had homework , it was only a matter of time before the dog was accused of eating it.

How we use this phrase now

No matter the origin, sometime in the 1950s, the expression became set as the dog ate my homework . This inspired any number of riffs on the theme, like my cow ate my homework or my brother ate my homework . In the 1960s, the dog ate my homework continued to gain popularity. The expression popped up a couple times in politics over the years, like when President Reagan said to reporters in 1988, “I had hoped that we had marked the end of the ‘dog-ate-my-homework’ era of Congressional budgetry … but it was not to be.”

It seems unlikely that the dog ate my homework was ever used consistently or frequently by actual schoolchildren. In fact, it’s the unlikeliness of the story that makes it so funny and absurd as a joke. Instead, teachers and authority figures appear to have cited the dog ate my homework many times over the years as such a bad excuse they can’t believe students are really using it.

In the 21st century, students don’t spend as much time working with physical pen and paper as they once did. That may contribute to the decline in the use of the phrase. So, maybe soon we’ll see a new equally absurd phrase pop up. Come on Zoomers, you’ve got this.

WATCH: What's A Unique Homework Routine That Works?

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Why Do We Say “The Dog Ate My Homework”?

The history of the delinquent schoolchild’s favorite excuse..

Did this sad Lab eat your homework?

iStockphoto.

Viacom announced on Monday that Mitt Romney had declined to appear on Nickelodeon’s Kids Pick the President special this year, citing time constraints. President Obama’s camp pounced on Romney’s decision, saying, “Kids demand details … ‘The dog ate my homework’ just doesn’t cut it when you’re running for president. ” When did “my dog ate my homework” become known as schoolchildren’s favorite excuse?

The 1970s. Delinquent schoolchildren and adults have been blaming their shortcomings on their pets for more than a century, but it wasn’t until the 1970s that “my dog ate my homework” came to be considered the No. 1 likely story. One of the first sad sacks who was said to blame his dog for his own ill-preparedness was a priest. In this anecdote, which appeared as early as 1905, a clergyman pulls his clerk aside after a service to ask him whether his sermon seemed long enough. The clerk assures him that it was very nice, “just the right length,” and the priest is relieved. “I am very glad to hear you say that,” he says, “because just before I started to come here my dog got hold of my sermon and ate some of the leaves .” The story was repeated again and again . The first citation of the excuse in the Oxford English Dictionary is a 1929 article from the Manchester Guardian , which reads, “It is a long time since I have had the excuse about the dog tearing up the arithmetic homework.” In Bel Kaufman’s best-selling 1965 novel Up the Down Staircase , a list of students’ excuses for not having their homework includes “ My dog went on my homework ” and “ My dog chewed it up .” Even in 1965, however, it was still just another excuse.

“My dog ate my homework” became known as the quintessential far-fetched excuse in the next decade, when the phrase was used over and over . In a 1976 account of the Watergate tapes, E.C. Kennedy describes listening to President Nixon “ working on the greatest American excuse since the dog ate my homework .” A 1977 article from Alaska’s Daily News-Miner describes the difficulty students faced in coming up with a new excuse since “ ‘My dog ate my term paper’ is no longer acceptable .”

The excuse was alluded to more and more throughout the 1980s. A 1982 Time magazine column on excuses suggested that “The dog ate my homework is a favorite with schoolchildren,” while a 1987 New York Times column about how students were starting to blame malfunctioning computers and printers quoted one teacher as saying she recently received “ a note from a student’s mother saying the dog ate his homework .” Even the president picked up on the trend: When Congress pushed spending approval to the last minute in 1988, Ronald Reagan complained to reporters, “ I had hoped that we had marked the end of the ‘dog-ate-my-homework’ era of Congressional budgetry … but it was not to be .” It was all over television, with references to the excuse on shows like The Simpsons and Full House . By 1989, the narrator of Saved by the Bell theme was singing, “ And the dog ate all my homework last night .”

The phrase continued to grow more popular. Between 1990 and 2000, the New York Times wrote articles with headlines such as “ Beyond ‘Dog Ate My Homework’ ” and “ Homework Help Sites (Or, the Dog Ate My U.R.L.) ,” while The New Yorker described one criminal’s accounts of his wrongdoings as having “a decided my-dog-ate-my-homework quality.” Children’s books tried to capitalize on the trend with titles like A Dinosaur Ate My Homework , Aliens Ate My Homework , Godzilla Ate My Homework , and My Teacher Ate My Homework , daring to use the term to promote reading and education. Such titles have continued into the 2000s, but in recent years the phrase seems to finally be losing steam .

Bonus Explainer: An Obama spokesperson also said, “ It’s no surprise Romney decided to play hookey .” Why do we call cutting school “playing hookey”? To play hookey began as an Americanism in the 19 th century. The earliest known citation comes from 1848, from John Russell Bartlett’s Dictionary of Americanisms , where it was said to mean “to play truant” and noted to be “ a term used among schoolboys, chiefly in the State of New York .” Word historians usually suggest that it’s from to hook it meaning to run away , a term as old as the Revolutionary War. However, others have proposed that it might derive from the Dutch expression hoekje spelen , the Dutch expression for “hide and seek”—especially since playing hooky emerged in New York during a time when it had a larger Dutch population.

Got a question about today’s news?  Ask the Explainer .

Explainer thanks Barry Popik, Jesse Sheidlower of the Oxford English Dictionary, and Ben Zimmer of the Visual Thesaurus and Vocabulary.com .

April 18, 2014

Contemporary Fiction , Education

The Dog Ate My Homework

It seemed like the most plausible excuse at the time: blame the new dog for eating up my now overdue essay. But then I just had to embellish...

Karen Donley-Hayes

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The fact of the matter was, I didn’t have anyone else to blame. So I blamed Roscoe–perhaps ill-advised, him being my father’s K-9 partner-in-waiting, but I had completely forgotten my homework. I wasn’t in the habit of lying or putting blame where it didn’t belong, but I was caught off guard–daydreaming about Roscoe, in fact. My third grade teacher now loomed over my desk, expectant, her hand outstretched, fingers wiggling. And in my deer-in-the-headlights stare, with Miss Underwood frowning down at me, the words blurted out all on their own.

“Roscoe ate it.”

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“What?” Miss Underwood scowled more, if that were possible. She planted her fists against her ample hips and leaned in, hovering over me.

I blinked, swallowed a spitless lump in my throat, and having already lied, promptly repeated myself. “Roscoe ate it,” I said with slightly more conviction.

Miss Underwood stood stiff, smack dab in front of my desk, so close I should have been able to smell the little flowers on her dress. I had an overpowering impulse to move away from her, but my chair shackled me to the spot. I stared at the vibrant gladiola sprouting out from beneath Miss Underwood’s belt, and felt the entire class’s attention span shake from all else and swoop down on me.

“Mister Pike. You are not lying to me, are you?” It was more a challenge than a question.

Miss Underwood absolutely terrified me–almost as much as did the prospect of acquiring the entire class’s ridicule or getting caught in a bald-faced lie–and such terror can be a remarkable survival mechanism, because my brain spun a web and my mouth spewed it out without so much as consulting with me. I sat, breathless and rapt with the rest of the class, listening to this story unfold.

“Oh, no ma’am,” a voice–my voice–poured out of me, my brain, frenetic, only barely keeping a syllable ahead of my mouth. “I wrote my report on the metamorphosis of tadpoles into frogs,” I heard. (It was a good thing I had recently become fascinated by this amphibious process and had not only been reading about it but observing it in the natural setting of our backyard.) “And I took the paper with me to the pond so that I could look at them and draw pictures to show the stages, and Roscoe came with me, and I had a tadpole on the top of the paper so I could trace it and Roscoe saw it and before I knew what happened he jumped on it and swallowed it whole, and the paper.”

I shifted my bug-eyed gaze up the floral landscape to the teacher’s face. Miss Underwood remained completely still.

“And the rock that I had holding the paper down,” my voice said. Her eye twitched, barely perceptible. “And the pencil I was using.” Her brows drew closer together. “And then it was dark, and I couldn’t draw them again, and then I had to do my chores and it was time for bed.”

Miss Underwood frowned, unwedged one hand from her hip and pointed at my chest. “You’d better be sure to get that dog to the vet, young man.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I nodded vigorously. “We’re taking him this afternoon.”

“Good,” she said. “And re-write your report and bring it in tomorrow. Along with a report on how Roscoe did at the vet’s.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, and wondered if the pittance I had in the Mason jar under my bed could buy me a plane, train, or boat ticket anywhere else in the world.

That afternoon, when I slouched from the school bus, Roscoe careened down the driveway to meet me, his half-grown legs all knobs and paws flying indiscriminately; he seemed none the worse for wear for his “misadventure” of the day before. I trudged up the driveway, the pup orbiting around me, bounding and panting, pausing only to wolf down my mother’s lone remaining gladiola. While my reporting of late had been very light on honesty, there was truth to the fact that Roscoe was a one-canine mauling, gulping, devouring, completely-nondiscriminatory eating machine. The gladiolas, much to my mother’s dismay, had vanished into his maw during a single galumphing frenzy; this was shortly after Roscoe had discovered the infinite wonders that the frog pond in the backyard held. Mom had admonished my father to restrain the dog. Dad had testified that socialization was critical to Roscoe’s mental development and future as a police dog. Mom declared her flowers unfair casualties. Dad promised to build a fence for her gardens (a moot point, as Roscoe had already decimated them).

The sound of my mother’s footsteps on the porch drew my attention; I looked up to see Roscoe gleefully caprioling by her side. She had her arms crossed over her chest, and was staring at me with an expression that immediately made me slow my already lethargic trudge.

“I hear Roscoe ate your homework,” she said. There was no tone of accusation or belief–or even disbelief, for that matter–just a simple statement. I stopped and looked up at her, and for two ticks of a heartbeat I was on the verge of coming clean. I steeled myself to admit my lie, to face the consequences, and to be a better man for it. During those two ticks of a heartbeat, Roscoe splayed himself on the porch and latched onto one of the banister posts, gnawing and grunting.

“Yes ma’am,” I said, and felt the heat rise under my collar as I lied to my own mother. I looked intently at Roscoe (who supported my story with his every action) to avoid looking in my mother’s eyes. I heard her sigh.

“Well, alright then. I called Dr. Brown’s office as soon as Miss Underwood phoned me, so let’s get things together and get going. Hopefully, he’ll be fine; it’s that rock I’m worried about.”

I nodded and walked up the porch steps, head down and ashamed, and slipped past my mother, past the squirming, euphoric mass of German shepherd enthusiasm. My mother stayed on the porch while I dropped my book bag on the kitchen table. Roscoe leapt up, flung himself against her legs. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her reach down idly and rub his head. He gazed up at her adoringly, his tongue lolling out of his mouth, wood splinters flecking his lips; his tailed swished nonstop across the porch.

“Maybe the paper and rock and all just went right through him,” I said, and hoped that if a dog actually were to eat a paper and a rock, they might actually move right along. Otherwise, I was going to be busted when the vet checked the dog out and declared him devoid of foreign objects. Not that I wanted him to have a problem; I didn’t, but his clean bill of health was my sentence. Granted, it was of my own making.

“I hope so,” Mom’s voice came in from the porch. I heard her add, under her breath, “Roscoe, you’re going to be the death of me if you live long enough.”

In the vet’s waiting room, I studiously worked on my tadpole-to-frog report, shielding it from Roscoe, who my mother worked up a sweat restraining. And when it was finally his turn to go in and be examined, and I was left with silence and the weight of my own guilt, I could barely remember the details of amphibian metamorphosis, much less write about them. Mom, quiet, read a paperback. The clock on the wall ticked off five minutes, 10, 15; the smell of the waiting room mixed with the odor of wet dog, cat pee, and rodent cage litter, and I began to feel nauseous.

“How’s your paper coming?” Mom asked. I shrugged. I sweated.

I was nearly to the point of breaking down and admitting my guilt, or at least bolting from the waiting room and into the parking lot, when Dr. Brown summoned us. Mom clutched her purse, and I drooped behind her, a condemned man going to the gallows. The vet brought us into the execution chamber, and closed the door. The harsh florescent lights gleamed, ruthless and all-seeing. Roscoe was not in the room to witness my punishment.

Dr. Brown cleared his throat. I felt a prickling thrill of sweat, and stared fixedly at the poster of canine parasites on the wall. “Well, we took x-rays of Roscoe, and we don’t see your rock or your paper.”

I couldn’t help a fleeting glance at the vet; he met my eyes for a beat, then looked over at Mom. “But it’s a good thing you brought him in, because we did see something else.”

I blinked, confused.

“Oh?” my mother said.

Dr. Brown turned his back to us, popped a thick sheet of film against a panel, and turned on the light behind it. Ribs and spine and gray masses flickered to light. Dr. Brown glanced over his shoulder toward us. Both Mom and I leaned toward the glowing image. Dr. Brown cleared his throat again and pointed to something in the middle of the picture. I looked closer, squinted, and then with a sting of recognition, I understood the image on the screen. My mother realized at the same time, and she chuffed, glancing sidelong at me.

“This,” Dr. Brown said, tapping the image of my G.I. Joe, recently MIA, “needs to come out. And it won’t come out the easy way like that rock did,” he glanced down at me again. “It will snag other things he swallows, and you’re going to have a bad emergency situation, maybe a dead dog.”

My mother reached for the collar of her blouse, pressed her hand flat. “Oh, no. Oh, poor Roscoe!”

My skin prickled again, but I wasn’t worried about my guilt and punishment anymore. “Will he be okay?” My voice sounded tiny and tremulous. “He won’t really die, will he?”

Dr. Brown smiled then. “No, I think we got him in time. We’ll put him on the surgery schedule for the morning, and he should be right as rain in a month’s time.” He reached a hand out and ruffled my hair. I realized I was crying. “In a way, it’s a good thing he ate your homework, otherwise you might not have found out about this until it was too late.”

I looked up at him lamely.

That weekend, Dad fenced off what was left of Mom’s gardens, I patrolled the entire house and yard and commandeered all swallowable objects (and even some that didn’t seem swallowable), and my folks and I discussed the new obedience regimen for Roscoe. When he came home a few days later, belly shaved but none-the-worse for wear, I doted on him and chaperoned him vigilantly. After a short period of gorging withdrawal, Roscoe adjusted gleefully to his obedience training, and was already ahead of the learning curve when he officially entered his police-dog training.

I was too ashamed to ever admit to my parents my panic-induced homework fabrication. I like to think that the guilt and anxiety I experienced for that long afternoon was punishment enough, and sometimes, I also like to think that it was all part of the plan for Roscoe’s long and decorated life. I like to think that, but I don’t believe it much more than Miss Underwood believed me.

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the dog ate my homework

English [ edit ]

Phrase [ edit ].

• 2011 May 6, Damian Carrington, “Environment action delays blamed on 'dog ate my homework' excuses”, in The Guardian ‎ [1] , archived from the original on 2022-08-24 : Their reasons for missed deadlines are mostly of the " dog ate my homework variety" including such easily foreseeable events as yesterday's elections and that the badger culling policy is "difficult and sensitive".
• 2014 September 12, Oscar Webb, quoting Donald Campbell, “UK Government Changes Its Line On Diego Garcia Flight Logs Sought in Rendition Row - Again”, in VICE ‎ [2] , archived from the original on 2022-12-05 : The government's excuses for Diego Garcia's missing records are getting increasingly confused and desperate. Ministers could hardly be less credible if they simply said ' the dog ate my homework .'
• 2017 February 18, Mia Berman, “Go West-minster, Young Mastiff”, in HuffPost ‎ [3] , archived from the original on 2019-04-09 : Our immune system's weak; we've been sick as a dog, missing work and school, resorting to " the dog ate my homework " excuses amidst these frigid dog days of winter.

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Strange News

Can the dog still eat your homework.

It may be the best known bad excuse for being unprepared: "The Dog Ate My Homework." But where does the phrase come from and how has it changed over the years? Weekend Edition host Scott Simon talks with Forrest Wickman, a reporter with Slate Magazine , who has the answers.

(SOUNDBITE OF PAPER RUSTLING)

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

(SOUNDBITE OF DOG GROWLING)

SIMON: I don't know what to say. The dog ate my script.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOG BARKING)

SIMON: You know that old excuse that makes people groan, palpably ridiculous, right? But was it always so? This week Forrest Wickman of Slate magazine traced the origin of that phrase school kids have used for decades to explain why they don't have their homework and adults have cited as what amounts to an exemplar of absurdity.

Forrest Wickman joins us from Slate in New York. Thanks so much for being with us.

FORREST WICKMAN: Thanks for having me.

SIMON: So, near as you can tell, who was the first person to say something like, the dog ate my homework?

WICKMAN: It's hard to point to anyone in particular. One can make the argument that one of the first examples is this guy Saint Tyron(ph) who around the fifth century had this fox that he found and he started taking the fox around. And at some point the fox ate his psalms.

SIMON: So the fox ate my scripture?

WICKMAN: Right.

SIMON: OK. So that's the 5th century. We've got some time to account for. Yes. And?

WICKMAN: It really starts picking up in the 20th century. One of the earliest really popular stories that's told often around 1905, 1910 - this priest who finishes his sermon and then he pulls his clerk aside and he asks his clerk: What did you think of the sermon? He's a little worried. And the clerk says: Oh, I think it was a fine sermon. And the priest says: Oh, I'm so glad because the dog just ate the last several pages of my sermon.

SIMON: What other kind of permutations were you able to find over the years?

WICKMAN: Yeah, so even through the '60s people - it's still juts one of many excuses. People might say my dog ate my homework. My dog went on my homework is one excuse that's used in a popular book from 1965 that's called "Up the Down Staircase."

SIMON: This is Bel Kaufman's novel about a New York City high school. Right. Yeah.

WICKMAN: Right. And it was turned into a movie in 1967. And then in the 1970s, it finally really becomes a think, a stock excuse that was well known as perhaps the most popular excuse.

SIMON: Is it an excuse that's running out of steam in the digital age when it might make more logical sense to say the dog drooled on my hard drive?

WICKMAN: Right. There has been some speculation about this. Google has these things called engrams, which track the appearance of a phrase over time. And pretty much any permutation of my dog ate my homework, all of those phrases, have been declining over the last decade or so.

SIMON: Anything to replace it?

WICKMAN: I don't know. In the '90s, there were all these children's books that started to really play with the phrase once it was so well known. So, "Godzilla Ate My Homework," "A Dinosaur Ate My Homework," "Aliens Ate My Homework," "My Teacher Ate My Homework." But I don't see any of those taking over anytime soon.

SIMON: I like the aliens ate my homework. I mean, perhaps that's their way of learning about our world.

WICKMAN: That could be how it works.

SIMON: Forrest Wickman of Slate magazine. Thanks so much for being with us.

WICKMAN: Thanks very much.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SIMON: This is NPR News,

Copyright © 2012 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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My Dog Ate My Homework

From the book The Biggest Burp Ever

My dog ate my homework. That mischievous pup got hold of my homework and gobbled it up.

My dog ate my homework. It’s gonna be late. I guess that the teacher will just have to wait.

My dog ate my homework. He swallowed it whole. I shouldn’t have mixed it with food in his bowl.

 — Kenn Nesbitt

Copyright © 2014. All Rights Reserved.

Reading Level: Grade 1 Topics: Animal Poems , School Poems Poetic Techniques: Irony , Narrative Poems Word Count: 60

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The Dog Ate My Homework

I have a lot of sympathy for Gary Hart. Sometimes I don't remember my age, either. I'll get it somewhere in the ballpark, but who can remember everything, and what's a year or two among friends? Then my daughter reminds me, but I tell her I'm not old enough to have a child her age and she must be mixed up. You know how children are; they forget things. They think that you spanked them, when you know for a fact you never raised your voice in anger, let alone your hand.

As far as that goes, there are days when it's hard to remember my own name, or how I got it. I've always had trouble with names. Someone might have changed it, a grandfather or somebody. I don't remember his name, either (memory plays such funny tricks). Maybe my great-grandfather Agnew did it, which might make me related to Spiro. You remember Spiro? Or did he change his name, too? Well, it's a free country; anyone can do it.

But when someone starts writing letters and signing my name, that's the limit. Just the other day I learned that someone got a picture postcard of a man with a red beret, and the card had my name at the end of it. I didn't know anything about it, and I'm prepared to deny it if asked. Or at least, like Edmund Meese, say "I don't remember." Like Meese's loan, it was "totally separated from any knowledge on my part." The letter was unauthorized, in any case, and I'm sure it was inaccurate. I have always favored moving the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Haifa--such nice oranges in Haifa --and I see no reason to apologize for my position on that issue. I mean, I apologize for the ambiguity, if any, but I'm not apologizing for anything, and if I seem to have apologized, well I apologize for that. It was a mistake.

Maybe the dog did it. He ate my homework once. That was in third grade. "Really, Miss Hollihan," I said to the teacher, "he did. The dog ate my homework. I had it all done and it was sitting there on the table, and when I went to pick it up to take it to school the dog came along and just ate it." I know it sounds funny, but you wouldn't believe the things that dog could eat. Well, maybe you had to know the dog. He ate a chicken once, feathers and all, and my father had to pay the farmer for it. The farmer was really mad. I tried to tell Miss Hollihan that, too, but she just looked at me and put a little x after my name in her book. That meant you hadn't done your homework, when everybody knew that I had. It wasn't fair.

So, as I said, I have a lot of sympathy for Gary Hart. We've got a lot in common. I even heard that a famous man is preparing a vicious personal attack on me. One of the news aides here told me. Naturally I counterattacked at once. Any reasonable person would. Maybe I should have seen the attack first, but I'm a busy person. I can't find it now, and I'm certainly prepared to apologize even though it wasn't really my fault--but I can tell you I'm going to get that news aide. There's an awful lot of faulty staff work these days. Actually, I didn't know anything about it; the whole thing was a mistake. Yes, and that other thing, too.

I know that Gary Hart would understand these things. We've got a lot in common. Including the dog. It ate his homework, too.

Echols: So, the dog ate my homework?

The dog ate my homework, a colorful and simple statement. Say it out loud with me: The dog ate my homework!

You're smiling just now at the thought of saying something like this to a parent or teacher. Or, you're smiling at a memory of having actually said it, straight-faced, and super serious to someone. After all, this is the oldest line passed down through generations and generations of school-aged children. This saying probably predates the birth of our country. Heck, that excuse is probably older than dirt. When we hear it, we assume that those who utter the phrase simply aren't being truthful as to why they failed to do what everyone else in a class did … their homework.

Personally, I don't remember ever using that line, although I know folks who did. And Neely Tucker, it just doesn't sound the same when you say "the goats ate my homework!" We know that cats don't actually eat homework. So the dastardly blame has to fall on "man's best friend," our loyal, sweet, beloved puppy dogs.

"The dog ate my homework" is a line used in a seemingly feeble attempt to cover up the fact that you didn't do your homework. As the story usually goes, the person blaming dogs really forgot to do their homework or they simply just left it at home. If you can believe it, there's even a Wiki-How page that explains how to create the best excuse for not having homework completed on time. I wonder if people who actually might use that site think that teachers and parents never find out. Oh the joys of the World Wide Web, as if we needed any creative help with that one.

Either way, at some point in our lives, someone we know has said the dog ate their homework. Folks who hear that silly, unbelievable excuse of a reason typically react the same way. They shake their heads and roll their eyes back. It's as if your ears suddenly develop a shooting pain at the very sound of the excuse. Does it surprise you to know that "The dog ate my homework" ranks in the top three excuses that teachers hear every year?

I'm told that if you show your teacher the pieces of dog-shredded homework, you might get a pass to re-do it the next day. Beware though, teachers have an unexplained sixthsense that allows them to detect real dog-torn paper as opposed to people-torn paper. According to the Wonderopolis website, dogs will eat just about anything if given the opportunity. The site goes on to say that scientists believe when a dog eats homework, other paper, and non-food items it could be because of good, old-fashioned boredom. Dogs turn their boredom into curiosity and begin to explore things, which ultimately results in finding shredded scraps of homework! And Wonderopolis takes it one step further. If not boredom, your paper shredding dog might be hungry. Whether it's food he smells on your paper from your fingers touching a sandwich you ate for lunch or just your scent on the paper, the best advice for a shredding, chewing, paper-eating pup is to keep your homework, books, newspaper, and other chew-able paper out of your canine's reach.

Now we know some of the reasons why dogs might actually eat homework. But what if, what if … your dog really, honestly, did eat the homework? What if you owned a super energetic puppy that loves you more than anything in the world? What if that puppy hated it when you left the house for any length of time and found things to chew that smelled like you? What if you owned an angelically sweet border collie who, dare I say it… actually eats your homework?

Who would believe you? Certainly not any teachers and probably not even your own parents. I'm here to tell you, from personal experience in our home, that this really can happen. But there is more to this ominous cliché. In addition to the delicious homework that gets eaten, dogs today like to also consume your monthly bills, your notes for work, your cell phone, your shoes, and whatever else they can get their teeth on for appetizers.

Recently, I got a 40 percent off retail coupon in the mail. I placed it on my kitchen counter and left the room for two seconds. Upon my quick return, that coupon was cut down to about 1 percent off because it was in a million, tiny, shredded pieces on the floor. And then there were notes I made while on a conference call with a client. After finishing the call, I left the notes on a table. I walked out to get something from my car. When I got back, the notes looked as though they'd gone through one of those professional shredders.

We have our very own four-legged furry little personal shredder named Scout. You can see it in his eyes that he's a shredder. I firmly believe that puppy dogs shred things because they miss us or they're mad at us for leaving them alone for a bit. Or it could be because they're bored or hungry. My family knows first-hand that a dog really can eat your homework. Around our house, it's not so much that Scout eats the homework, but he can certainly shred it into tiny little microscopic pieces!

So the next time you hear someone say, "The dog ate my homework," ask them if they've been to our house. Tweet your story about missing paperwork or homework to @TheDonnaEchols!

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Charles Darwent on Ellen Gallagher: AxME - The dog ate my homework, Miss Gallagher

Why does this highly-rated american artist ask so much of us before we even look at her work, article bookmarked.

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Last week I spoke to a gifted young painter, a Jerwood Fellow, about his work. The conversation went like this. Me: “The two small pictures are particularly strong. I really like them.”

JF (alarmed): “Uh, I’m not sure ‘like’ is a word that can be used in critical discourse these days.”

So it goes. Once upon a time, long, long ago, there was nothing wrong with work that pleased, in whatever way it contrived to. Then someone invented critical theory, art schools became university departments, and pleasure went out of the window. Good painting might do a whole thesaurus of things — ironise, deconstruct, conceptualise, “reference its own process”, etcetera – but it must on no account be likeable.

I have no doubt, by these lights, that Ellen Gallagher is a very good painter. The 47-year-old American is best known for her canvases, although, this being 2013, she also makes films and sculptures: one, Jungle Gym/Preserve, is in the new show of her work, AxME, at Tate Modern. There is nothing wrong with making art in different mediums – see Michelangelo. But it is the idea of Gallagher as a painter, of the kind of painting she does, that bothers me.

Let’s start with Double Natural (2002). This vast, yellow canvas, perhaps 7ft high and 10ft wide, is Gallagher’s best known. On it are pasted, in a grid 33 squares wide and 12 high, advertisements and cuttings from American black lifestyle magazines. (Gallagher’s father’s family came from Cape Verde.) All of these offer perfectability of a kind, or at least an idea of self-improvement. One woman beams at us from under a headline that says, unconvincingly, “I Am Happy”. Another asks, “Do you want men to OBEY YOU?”, while a third advertises an Amazing Liquid That Removes Corns.

It is hair that is Gallagher’s particular focus, though, as it is of the small ads she uses. The majority of these are for hairstyles or hair products. To these the artist has added plasticine hairdos – straightened bangs, cornrows, dreadlocks, flicks – moulded by hand and painted yellow. Gallagher has also blanked out her subjects’ eyes, turning them into zombies. Her point seems clear. Black women are sold a dream of white womanly perfection. She has taken that process to its deadening extreme by turning her women blonde.

To say that Double Natural is dislikeable is to state the obvious. Its subject – the exploitation of racial insecurity for commercial gain – is not a pretty one, and Gallagher’s image would have no business being pretty. But the problem is that it isn’t anything else, either. Other than an immediate hit of macabre glibness, Double Natural just doesn’t deliver. The longer you look at it, the less you get back. Vacuousness in art can be extraordinarily powerful: Andy Warhol made an entire career out of it. But Gallagher’s painting isn’t empty in a good way. It is just empty.

Let me see if I can be clearer. Another work in this vast, 11-room show is called Bird in Hand. It, too, is vast. Like many contemporary artists, Gallagher has created her own myth-world, one figure of which is a one-legged tap-dancer called Pegleg. (Pegleg actually existed — one of the ads in Double Natural is for his show.) In Bird in Hand, he mutates into a pirate, his hair and half-leg doodling out to fill the canvas in tendrils that might be seaweed.

Gallagher is part of her own mythology. Prior to being an artist she studied marine biology, and did research into pteropods. The many works in her Watery Ecstatic series, given a whole room in this exhibition, start from an interest in sea-life – eels, urchins, octopi. The pictures are largely in watercolour and cut paper, and, as compositions, appear less to evolve than to mutate. You can see the reasoning. Life starts at Point A and wanders off where Darwin takes it: so why not art? Bird in Hand grows, pictorially, out of Gallagher’s own history and interests.

But does that make it a good painting? The abstract works of the Jerwood painter I spoke to stood on their own as images: you didn’t need to know his life story or theories on art to respond to them. To get Gallagher, you have to have done your homework. Her art is about understanding, not seeing; when she paints, she paints incidentally. Any other medium might have done – actually, her films seem to me far better than her canvases (Murmur: Super Boo is annoyingly unforgettable). But then many people disagree with me, and you may well be one of them.

To 1 Sep (020-7887 8888)

CRITICS' CHOICE

Small is beautiful: Calder After the War at London’s Pace gallery exhibits the American sculptor’s complex mobiles (above), made out of pieces small enough to post to his friend Marcel Duchamp (till 7 Jun). At the Ingleby gallery in Edinburgh, Garry Fabian Miller: The Middle Place reveals the changes in light, colour and atmosphere on a fixed line in the horizon, looking out over the Severn Estuary, plus more recent, camera-less light works on the theme of horizons.

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The Dog Ate My Homework

The first known time that anyone used the “dog ate my homework” excuse was, according to writing expert and educationist, Christoper Simpson, in 1835. The student who was said to have uttered the now famous explanation for the absence of homework was Henry Pennywhistle, but other sources attribute the words to a story about a Welsh minister in 1905, and yet another source points to Saint Tyron who in the fifth century found a fox with whom he made friends. At some point, the fox ate his psalms, but “the fox ate my scriptures,” doesn’t quite have the same ring. Whatever. The quote spawned a cottage industry of creative excuses, many of which became children’s books (“Godzilla Ate My Homework,” “A Dinosaur Ate My Homework,” “Aliens Ate My Homework,” “My Teacher Ate My Homework,” and so on).

We know that dogs sometimes do eat things they ought not to, something the author, John Steinbeck” found out when he reportedly found the first draft of his novel, Of Mice and Men , chewed up by his dog.  Steinbeck was known, of course, for his Poodle, “Charley,” who accompanied him on a criss-cross journey “in search of America.”  The book resulted in  Travels with Charley: In Search of America,  though the journey was in the 1960s, and  Of Mice and Men  was published in 1937, so we think the Poodle was innocent. In fact, it was Steinbeck’s dog, Max, who chomped on the first draft of the classic.  Steinbeck owned many dogs in his life, including an Airedale Terrier, but Max’s breed remains a mystery to us.

Image: “Dog Ate my Homework” is available on a t-shirt and hoodie here. 

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Surprised By Joy

Meditations on Life and Parenting

The Dog Ate My Homework

“ Your beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your values. Your values become your destiny.” – Mahatma Gandhi

The other night our puppy ate Miss O’s homework. Such a cliché but truly, it happened. It was something she’d brought home finished, so it wasn’t like she had to turn it in. But when she saw the remnants of the paper in Cooper’s dog bed, this homework became the best thing she’d ever done.

Miss O was so angry. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen my generally happy kid this angry. She wanted to hit and kick the dog. Someone had to pay for ruining her beautiful work product.

Had it been the beginning of the day, I’m not sure she would have lost it to the degree that she did. But it was the end of the day, and tolerance was down across the family.

So, I stopped her from beating the dog and felt a huge surge of anger in myself as well. Something along the lines of, “ How dare you want to hit the dog for ruining things without understanding how many things of mine YOU have destroyed! And do I hit you for that? NO!!! ”

Three things strike me about this.

• How transferrable anger is
• That life is defined by these moments, not just the ones where we are all happy
• How much energy it takes to transmute anger into something expressed but not acted upon

Scenes like this make me think about psychologist and author, Jonathan Haidt’s, metaphor of the elephant and the rider. We think our minds are in control but as the rider atop the elephant of our feelings, it’s just an illusion. Or, in this case, it takes a lot of effort for the rider to turn the elephant away from rampaging down a path.

I’ve wondered why we are designed like this but as I see this play out close up with my family, I’m struck by the possibility that how we traverse the gulf between emotion and action is in part driven by our values. We start the groove the reactions and they become at least slightly easier.

That is to say, as we train the dog, we train ourselves.

When we’d all calmed down, I told Miss O that beating a dog doesn’t make it so that it won’t eat your homework, it just makes it a mean or fearful creature. And I suspect that it makes us a little meaner or more fearful when we do the same. So, we lost a piece of homework but learned a little bit of a lesson. Probably a fair trade.

There’s no doubt that I got my values from my parents. For more on my discovery about my dad’s source of the always present glint in his eye, I’ve written a book,  Finding My Father’s Faith . For a bit about the courage I learned from my dad, please see my post on Heart of the Matter: The Courage to Not Be Divisive

(featured photo is a photo of Miss O and Cooper in a calmer moment)

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66 thoughts on “ the dog ate my homework ”.

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It takes a lot of energy to transmute anger into something expressed but not acted upon, as you wisely say, but it also takes a long time to get some positive energy back after having been angry. Good lesson learned by the way!

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What an astute comment about moving back to positive energy, Cristiana! Yes, for me I’m always grateful for a good night’s sleep to help with the transition! Thanks for adding your wisdom!

You are an excellent guide for your children, Wynne. In addition, Jonathan Haidt is always a reliable reference, but he enlarges one point, at least as I understand his work:

“We think our minds are in control but as the rider atop the elephant of our feelings, it’s just an illusion. Or, in this case, it takes a lot of effort for the rider to turn the elephant away from rampaging down a path.”

Haidt adds to this point by telling us that we are unaware that our feelings lead our thoughts rather than follow them. As he describes it, the emotional reaction is so quickly followed by the brain-producing reasons for our decision (to express anger) that we believe the reasons come first. Thus, we are unaware that our rage is unjustified (if indeed it is unjustified) at the anger’s flash point.

When parents get control of their anger at their child and pull it back, I suspect they have well-developed ideas about the role of angry expressions toward the kids BEFORE anger-inducing incidents occur. Then, as you say, they can sometimes get control with much effort.

Like Liked by 4 people

Ah, what a wonderful clarification, Dr. Stein. Your point about the feeling first/rationale after reminds me that I’ve heard Haidt say that and I could have done a better job of describing that. But I really resonate with your remark that as grown-ups, our well-developed ideas help to gain control because they are practiced before the event has even occurred. Thank you for this very insightful comment.

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Oh, those life lessons just keep on coming, don’t they? One way or another we receive opportunities to help us realize that we can make a choice between anger, acceptance, fear, love. How else would we grow without contrast? I am so grateful to you, Miss O and Mini Coop for yet another reminder of those choices! I love that every life lesson that you all share is of benefit to me too. Thanks. I needed that!

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Oh, I’m so taken by your question, “How else would we grow without contrast?” It illuminates the way these lessons come and to be thankful for them!! Yes!! Thank you, dear Julia!

Good lesson. And things to remember with my new puppy. Lol

Thanks, matchpolly. And LOL, yes – so many things to remember with a new puppy!

Learning to cope with Cooper . . . there’s a hidden lesson in every trial Wynne, and kudos to your parenting wisdom to share it with Miss O . . . good work Mom.

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A hidden lesson in every trial. Amen, Fred!! We’ve got a lot to learn, that’s for sure. Thanks for coming along for the ride and encouraging us along the way!! ❤

“We start the groove” really jumps out at me right now. I had the most remarkable couple of convos last Sunday morning, and what that all has helped make clear, from a compassion-informed enacted-values perspective, is there’s lots of room to grow. That much “lots” can feel daunting, but it’s less so from a “start the [new] groove” one. The new grooves are growing, and that’s lovely from a deeper-time view. Thanks. 🙂

Love your acknowledgement that “lots” can feel daunting. Yes! But we can keep making the choice to march towards Anaheim and then it gets easier, right?

Did Miss O leave her homework where the puppy had access to it? If so, she may share in the responsibility of its destruction and has learned another life lesson in addition to the one you taught her. 🙂

Ah, a very good point, Nancy! I believe it was on the kitchen table so she could have put it away more effectively but it wasn’t left in a “Cooper” zone. 🙂

This may be the first time I’ve heard anyone admit to the old cliche. For that alone I’m charmed by this story. However handling the issue of anger at something that is beyond your control is a life skill. You’re doing a good job of helping your children with that.

I’m laughing, Ally. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard an actual dog ate my homework story either. And had Miss O never found the one corner of it remaining, it might have gone unnoticed. 🙂

Such a good point about handling the anger – I know I still work on how to express it clearly instead of burying it. A lifelong lesson my kids are helping me with too! 🙂

Interesting chain of events and emotions, and their inter-connectedness. I wonder if Miss O recognized the feelings below the anger? I wonder what the feelings below the anger were for you?

Oh, such an astute set of questions, David. You’re good! I think Miss O was coming down from playing the piano for a new audience and was tired at a level she didn’t realize. And for me – it was horror that the grace I show my kids doesn’t automatically turn into them being graceful. “What, one more thing I’m supposed to teach here?” kinda thing… Either of those make sense to you?

Seems totally congruous to me.

Oh dear. Anger is a tricky one. My 7-year-old granddaughter says : “Let’s not talk about it” when she gets angry. What we learn about life from the littles.

Oh yes, anger is a tricky one. What an interesting response from your granddaughter, VJ. You’re right – they are always teaching us something!

It’s all too easy to let our emotions get the best of us. It sounds like this was a lesson for everyone. “I’m struck by the possibility that how we traverse the gulf between emotion and action is in part driven by our values.” This feels so true–emotions are more automatic than logical decisions, so those core values are probably the elephant. Easier to train the elephant in advance, isn’t it?

train the elephant in advance – yes!! What a great observation, Erin!!

Love the honesty and truth here…especially your ever-keen awareness of how the energy in your household shifts from morning to evening. The fact that you’re tuned in — not just to the kids (and golly, now Cooper’s) rhythms as well as your own gives you such an advantage but crazy stuff still happens! Cheers to Miss O learning with and from her mama. 🥰

Crazy stuff still happens. There has never been a truer thing said about my little circus!! Thanks for coming along for the ride, dear Vicki!! ❤ ❤ ❤

LOL! I luv, luv, luv your circus. 🥰❤️🥰

I find my heightened anger reactions come with struggles in the areas that matter the most to me, things I feel passionate about, things that I see as never changing patterns where walls being put up stop learning and progression and just being better both personally and as a society. Encountering someone who feeds into those prevailing patterns irks me to no end and I honestly don’t want to stay silent, observe or listen- probably because I’ve been down that road so many times before.

Sincerely Wynne, I can say kudos to people like your dad for his mighty ability to rein his emotions in, and to you for passing those lessons on to O & D, and even Cooper 😉

This may be a combo comment for HoTM as well. That post has disappeared from my feed but once I hunt it out I may add more there! Loving WP today 😉

Oh, I totally resonate with your list of where things that heighten the anger reaction. Yes, the things that not just make me angry but light up a whole string of Christmas lights in my emotional response. 🙂

Thank you for your lovely comment on both of these posts – sorry for the WP fun today!! 🙂 🙂 🙂

Well that’s a fun image…various Wynne body parts sparkling and pulsing in rainbow colors 😉

Good job guiding the elephants!

Thank you, Rebecca! 🙂

“How much energy it takes to transmute anger into something expressed but not acted upon.” I’ve been thinking about this statement. What an amazing truth. I suspect most wars and many arguments come down to this simple statement. We get angry and it takes so much effort to turn it into something else. Your comment about anger being transferrable is so true too. I’m angry for Miss O just reading your story. Her hard work gone poof up in the air. Oh, Cooper, Cooper, Cooper. Ha, ha. I’m thinking the next time I run into an issue where I get angry, maybe you and Miss O can give me a course on how to transfer my aggression into something positive!!!!! Can you train old elephants new tricks? Ha, ha, well said Wynne. Interesting post.

Honestly, Brian, I wrote that statement from a place of being totally drained after the night in question so it was more intuitive than anything. But your comment makes me look at it again and wow, your observation is so astute. As for calling us – yes, please do. We probably won’t be able to help at all but we can likely have so much chaos going on around here that we’ll make you feel better…. 🙂 Although I have a hard time picturing you getting mad at anyone! Thank you for the great comment!

I love the explanation you gave to your daughter that beating the dog wouldn’t stop him from eating homework, but would only make mean or fearful. That is so true and you’re correct that it doesn’t do much for us either. Wonderful post.

Thank you, Elizabeth. I wrote that out of a suspicion that we all fear being treated the same way we treat others so I appreciate you picking up that sentence. I have no proof but believe it’s true.

I’m sure it’s true!

So many wonderful lessons we can learn by having a fur-child! Cheers to rational behaviors!!

Exactly – so many wonderful lessons! Well said. Thank you, Mary!

Anger is a powerful, yet very normal human emotion. What we do with it is important. It isn’t just about suppressing it, only for it to come out later in a different way, but to work through it, to see what are the deeper triggers and see how we might change things to alter future outcomes.

When my daughter was young we had a dog who chewed up clothes she left lying around on the floor. She wanted to get angry at the dog, but if she hadn’t left the things laying around, it wouldn’t happen! It was a difficult lesson to learn!

A great comment, Tamara. Yes, to learn from leaving things lying around on the floor. Yes! But also to find out way how to work through it instead of suppressing it. Such a great point!

*smile!* thanks! Yes, that is the challenge isn’t it?

It looks like the process of eating the homework opened up an even bigger and important learning moment for Miss O. This is lovely, Wynne, how you find the positives in each moment. It is so true that how we react to things ends up informing how it plays out and how others are also shaped by that reaction. It is always easier said than done – I know this first hand with my explosive child – but so important to try.

So important to try – exactly, Ab! And funny how it informs some other actions. Today I learned Cooper ate one of our soft nerf balls when I was on a call and for better or worse, I threw away the evidence before it could be discovered…. 🙂

Good idea to hide it!

This story beautifully illustrates the delicate balance between emotions and actions, and how our values play a crucial role in navigating that space. It’s impressive how you intervened to prevent Miss O from reacting in anger toward the dog, recognizing the importance of not letting emotions dictate our actions.

The comparison to the elephant and the rider is thought-provoking; indeed, our emotions often steer us, and it takes conscious effort to redirect them in a more constructive way. Teaching the dog and teaching ourselves seem to go hand in hand in this journey of self-control and understanding.

The lesson shared here reminds us that even in moments of frustration and anger, there’s an opportunity for growth and learning, for both Miss O and ourselves. Values passed down through generations shape our responses, and it’s heartening to see how you’re passing on wisdom to the next generation. 💫

Wow – thank you for the thoughtful and insightful comment. You are so right about the generational values and how they are passed without thinking. I appreciate your reading and wonderful response!

Beautiful post

Once, in high school, I used “the dog ate my homework” as an excuse because I figured, nobody would actually choose such a lame reason unless it really happened. I think I told my teacher that, too. And she bought it!

Oh, young Mark. Quite the rapscallion, weren’t you?

Ohh, you were. And I love the word rapscallion!!

It deserves a comeback if you ask me!

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Anger, frustration, hurt, and disappointment happen to all of us….Miss O learned and taught a valuable lesson here 💞

You’ve summed it up perfectly, Dawn. And something makes me think you’ve probably perfected the method of working through it with your animals! 🙂 ❤

The animals and my kids really taught me lessons for sure…and pushed me to grow. I still have times when I forget all I’ve learned.

Ah yes, I think all that we’ve learned is easy to forget. But can be so fun when we have those moments of looking back and celebrating. Yay, us! 🙂 ❤

What a wonderful post on emotional development, and yes how it is very contagious. When clients, students say, “I am so angry or mad” I pull out my emotional wheel. Then ask , “If you can’t use the word angry or mad, what word would you choose, and why?” This often catches them off guard, but also allows many of them to refocus and think about how they are truly feeling…

Wow, what a fascinating way to refocus. Thank you for sharing that. I’d imagine it also creates a deeper understanding of the emotional range too?

Welcome, and it often does…

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