Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2007

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A rival candidate for being the original:

A woman pregnant with triplets was walking down the street when a
masked robber ran out of a bank and shot her three times in the
stomach. Luckily, the babies were OK.  However, the surgeon decided not
to remove the bullets as it would risk the health of the babies.

A few weeks later, she gave birth to two healthy daughters and a
healthy son.  All were fine for 16 years, and then one day one of her
daughters walked into the room in tears.

"What's wrong?" asked the mother.

"I was taking a pee and this bullet came out!" replied the daughter.

The mother told her it was okay and explained what happened 16 years
ago.

About a week later the second daughter walked into the room in tears.

"Mom, I was taking a pee and this bullet came out!" Again the mother
told her not to worry and explained what had happened 16 years ago.

A week later her son walked into the room in tears. "It's okay," said
the mom, "I know what happened; you were taking a pee and a bullet came
out."

"No," said the boy, "I was playing with myself and I shot the dog."

Aloha ~~~ Ozzie Maland ~~~ San Diego

According to Hausman's _The Mythology of Dogs: Canine Legend and Lore
Through the Ages_ (pp. 199-200):

   The Old English Sheepdog Club of America began in 1904, but the
   dog had a slow climb to popularity in this country.  Fanciers, it
   appears, thought Bobtail was too big, too bumbly, too furry, and
   even too ephemeral.  Although his virtues far outweigh his faults,
   he was labeled "excessive."

   In time, though, things came around for him as people began to
   realize that the dog's personable manner was his most outstanding
   trait.  Americans found out soon enough that Bobtail was neither a
   wanderer nor a sprawler.  He was neither dull-witted nor
   rambunctious.  Size notwithstanding, Bobtail began to appeal to
   the public fancy.  He became a creature of cuteness, who was now
   the large target of small jokes.

   If this had fallen on any other dog, it might have lessened his
   stature, but in Bobtail's case, it pumped it up, for Bobtail
   became the origin of the so-called "shaggy-dog stories."

   The source of these dry tidbits of irony, which may or may not be
   termed stories, goes back to ancient Greece, where comedians
   enjoyed setting up a hero for a short fall.  Indeed, the basis of
   all shaggy-dog stories is that they lead you to believe one thing,
   and then give you another.

   During Prohibition in America, the same style of storytelling
   popped up again.  This time around it featured "shags,
   shag-nasties, and ragshags."  These were rough-shod
   characters--bums, alcoholics, and other down-at-heels folk.  The
   stories generally dealt with the ironies of life under the
   influence; they always carried a punch line, and they too were
   called "shaggy dogs."

   In the 1940s the stories turned into nonsense jokes, which played
   upon the mundane and offered a tongue-in-cheek reprisal, the punch
   at the end.  Then, in the 1950s, the stories became tagged to a
   primarily tailless, but not entirely humorless, working dog of the
   English countryside.

   It had gone this far, so now it went all the way.  Into the comedy
   club, by way of the back door, came the good-natured, fun-loving,
   hard-working Old English sheepdog.  The dog, growing quickly in
   popularity, inspired a lot of laughter.  Being an amorphous-
   looking fellow helped and so did his bundly, bag-of-surprises
   personality.  Of course, with both the dog and the stories, what
   you see is not what you get.

   Shaggy-dog stories were an antidote to the Atomic Age, a world
   undergoing drastic psychic and physical change.  It was a time
   where anything might happen and stories of outrageous dogs with
   mounds of rumpled fur were in keeping with the unpredictable tempo
   of the time.  If humans were acting like dogs and dogs were acting
   like humans, what was the difference?  No one knew which end was
   up anyway.

   Here, then, are a couple of vintage shaggy-dog samplers:

       Once there was an American businessman, who read in the
       lost-and-found section of the newspaper that a British
       gentleman had lost a shaggy dog and wanted it back.  Touched
       by the Englishman's caring so much for a dog, and knowing that
       he was travelling to London, the American found a dog that fit
       the shaggy's description.  Then when he went to England, he
       sought out the address printed in the lost-and-found ad.  A
       butler met them with a cold, uncurious stare.  However, seeing
       the shaggy for the first time, the butler looked horrified.
       "Sir," he said, "not _that_ shaggy!" and he slammed the door.

       Once a businessman was traveling by train and he chanced to
       enter a car where an Englishman was playing chess with a
       shaggy dog.  The businessman watched with great fascination as
       the dog quickly won the matched.  Surprised, the businessman
       remarked that he was amazed at the dog's prowess.
           "Do you enter him in tournaments?" he asked.
           The Englishmen replied that the dog wasn't that good.
           "You see," he said snidely, "he lost the previous two
       matches."

   As the fifties came to a close, shaggy-dog stories got shaggier
   and shaggier until there was no dog there at all.  The stories
   turned tail and became bizarre twists of wit that featured animals
   of all kinds.  Though they were still called shaggy dogs, the
   tales starred parrots, horses, cats, and almost any member of the
   animal kingdom.