Fishing has just gone to the dogs!

  Hehe, I have to ponder where the saying that something has "gone to the dogs" originated.  I get the giggles just thinking about it!  I mean, imagine, "Fishing has just gone to the dogs!".  Does that not conjure up the most unusual image ever?  It does for me with my overactive imagination!  I can just see old Ms. Ez, the Bayou Dog, sitting on the pier with her fishing pole.  It would be a humorous sight but with her, probably not out of the range of reality.  She has been fishing with me since she was a few weeks old so can most likely use a pole with the best of them!  The saying, however, has nothing to do with fishing dogs. I used to have an uncle who would make the statement quite often.  It seems to have been a saying that was common at one point in time around here.  (The fishing part anyway.)  My uncle would mention that fishing was poor and invariable use the phrase about going to the dogs. It tickled my funny-bone back then and still does.

  Yesterday morning, however, the phrase popped into my head for an entirely different reason.  I was on the pier bright and early and noticed that something rather large had washed up on the shore toward the west.  I sat and stared at the object a bit before realizing just what it was.  When I did, I started giggling as, out of the blue, the phrase popped into my mind.  I turned to look at Ms. Ez and asked "Did you lose something, Old Girl?"  She responded with a tail-thumping wiggle. Across the way, what appeared to be a large doghouse had washed ashore.  A DOGHOUSE! Imagine the giggle-inducing sight that was! Why and how had the doghouse come to be in the water?  Had someone placed said house on a steep slope and it sort of roll down the hill into the Bay?  Had someone intentionally shoved said house overboard? Was a dog still inside the runaway house?  Oh, the questions I had!  Ms. Ez was no help whatsoever as she offered nary an answer.

  Back to the idiom of something "going to the dogs".  The statement means that something or someone is in a downward spiral due to some misfortune.  I sort of have to disagree with the connotation that the phrase evokes.  When you think about a dog's life (at least most dogs nowadays), they have it made!  Dogs used to be working animals.  They would earn their "keep".  These animals would be herders, protectors and would provide rodent extraction services.  Pets now have become "part of the family" instead of working members of a team.  They are pampered beyond belief.  This may or may not be good as most have a need to perform and if not given a chance to do so, cannot be at their full potential.  They become lazy and lose their instinctive traits.  Take Ms. Ez as example.  She should be a hunter.  Ha!  Yes, she loves to chase squirrels but if you give her the command to "Get the squirrel!", she immediately runs to the same hickory tree in the yard...squirrel or no squirrel!  To her, the command means to go sit at that certain tree and then turn to look at me for approval.  Her instinct to chase the rodents has gone awry!  Today, I caught her staring at four squirrels in the bird feeders which are her sole duty to protect.  Not happening! When I gave the command, she ran to "THE" tree and turned to look at me while the squirrels munched the sunflower seeds!  Oh, Ms. Ez, your hunting skills have gone to the dogs.