Dogs have been our close companions for centuries, so it’s not surprising that they feature in so many of our proverbs and sayings.

Don’t disturb a sleeping dog.

OLDEST PROVERB

Some of the oldest proverbs (and the first known recorded one) are about dogs.

Dating back 4,000 years to the days of ancient Sumer and Assyria they offer such gems of wisdom as: ‘A dog which is played with turns into a puppy’, ‘In the city with no dogs, the fox is boss’, and more bafflingly ‘The bitch in her hurry whelps blind pups’.

The latter makes less sense to us with the distance of time, but was popular and well enough understood to spread around the world, eventually making it as far east as Pakistan, south to Ethiopia, and north and west to Europe and Britain.

LOVE ME, LOVE MY DOG

Many common proverbs are uncomplimentary about dogs. When Bernard of Clairvaux declared ‘Love me, love my dog’ during a sermon in 1150, it’s unlikely he was thinking of a real dog, but alluding to the fact that you should embrace someone’s faults as well as their good points. Since then it’s been attributed to many people, and it’s probable that it wasn’t even originated by St Bernard (no relation to the St Bernard the breed of dogs are associated with), but that he was simply quoting an already well-known saying. In later years the proverb inspired a picture painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds, a story by humourist PG Wodehouse, and was a hit in the 1975 UK pop charts for Alvin Stardust.