Man's best friend

Do you like cats or dogs? If like me, you are a dog person you may be slightly outraged by the Lithuanian expression when something goes awry/ becomes worthless - (nueiti) šuniui ant uodegos ("go on the tail of the dog"). I have no problems though with its Russian equivalent of коту под хвост (идти насмарку, "under the cats tail"), this sounds more telling. In fact, this is what happened with the first draft of this post just before publishing as the browser forced itself into an update and all the work was lost (automatic saves obviously did not work).

St Roch, patron saint of dogs

The exact history of those dog expressions in that sense remains unclear (at least I could not find more information on that), except that dogs are considered to be inferior, down-to-earth, pitiful creatures and this is explored widely in various languages. In English there is go to the dogs (go to ruin, morally or materially) or throw it to the dogs (throw it away as useless or worthless), Germans say vor die Hunde gehen or auf den Hund bekommen / bringen. The French though have this cute expression avoir du chien to speak of smb/ smth that is charming or attractive (Russian - "с изюминкой")!

Colloquial expressions with dog are numerous, even more so than with cats (at least as shown by the check in the English and Lithuanian dictionaries). These vary from such nice ones as dog-ears (for the worn-out corners of the well-read book) to dog days (great heat), dog age (a long time), dogs of war (horrors of war), hungry/cold/tired as a dog. Surely there are phrases that put cats and dogs together like to live like cat and dog, and raining cats and dogs. The latter one originates in northern mythology where the cat is supposed to have great influence on the weather; the dog is a signal of wind, like the wolf, both of which were attendants of Odin, the storm god. Thus the cat may be taken as a symbol of a down-pouring rain and the dog of the strong gusts of wind accompanying a rainstorm. 

Special mention is due to the following Russian expressions. These actually can be traced to specific origins and have equivalents in other languages.

 1) собака на сене\, сама не ест и другим не даёт \ ( English - dog in the manger , means someone who spitefully keeps smth that do not really want to prevent someone else from having it). Initially ascribed to the Greek Aesop's fables, but the equivalent expression in a number of European languages, including French chien du jardinier and Spanish el perro del hortelano, date to the 17th c when a Spaniard Lope de Vega wrote a play under the same name (The Gardener's Dog). It refers to a variant story when gardener sets his dog to guard the cabbages, which it continues to do after the master's death.

2) вот где собака зарыта (in the original German it is Da ist der Hund begraben or Da liegt der Hund, the English have nothing of a kind and got only as far as there's the rub or this is where the shoe pinches ("вот в чём загвоздка"). According to the version presented by Semen Zaimovsky (1930,  by the way - an excellent translator into Russian of R. Kipling, H.G.Wells and Jack London!), the story dates back to the 16th c and is to do with the beloved dog of the Austrian general Sigismund of Altensteig, whose life was saved by this dog. He buried his dog and put up a monument to honour it. As it was in a small German town, curious tourists could find this memorial only with the help from the local residents, hence the expression.  

3) собаку съесть  (на чём-либо) - meaning to know smth inside and out, to cut one's teeth in smth. Actually the expression in the doggy form is only available in Russian, and the full version of it as registered by the great Russian lexicographer Vladimir Dahl in the 19th c. is «Собаку съел, а хвостом подавился» to refer to someone who completed a difficult task but failed at an insignificant detail. Later only a shortened version in the present form became widely used. 



So much for the dogs. Now it would seem we are well warmed up to explore the subject of cats. Nah, maybe not:)