Dog Day Afternoon

“It’s a dog day afternoon!”

What’s a “dog day”? Do these events always take place in the afternoon?

I must have started asking myself these questions during the sweltering summer months, when the oppressive southern heat makes everyone want to hide inside. Curious sayings like this always catch my ear these days, and dogs are a huge part of my life.

Incidentally, just as dog-related sayings pop into our speech patterns, I’ll be dropping in some photos of my various canine furbabies over the years. Hopefully these visuals help you understand why dogs are often on my mind.

Here’s a great photo of Tiamat, my first love, creeping out from under the covers. This was about 20 years ago.

The term dog days traces back to the ancient Romans. They observed that Sirius, the Dog Star, rose just before the sun during the hottest months of the year, and it was (and is) the brightest star in the sky.

It wasn’t just hot, but it was believed to be a time that brought fever, disaster, and heated lethargy.

Having grown up in the south, I can vouch for the lethargy. Adults had a tough time going outside to do anything in July or August. We kids generally didn’t have that issue, but even for us, indoor activities during the hottest hours of the day were common.

Incidentally, the ancient Egyptians, Maya, Chinese, and Greeks also put a great deal of stock in Sirius, crafting their own narratives and myths around the star. The Egyptians followed the Dog Star to track the flooding of the Nile, the Mayans used it to create their calendar. In all ancient cultures, Sirius had significance.

So, that explains “dog days”, but what about “dog day afternoon”?

Molly 2.0—the later version of the sweetest angel I ever knew, who ultimately lost her mind to doggie dementia, but an amazing companion to the very end

In 1975, Al Pacino starred in a film about a 1972 robbery and hostage situation at a bank. The plot followed the robbers on a sweltering afternoon in Brooklyn, New York. Their plan goes awry quickly, so they end up taking hostages, and we get to see a complex “bad guy” characters on the big screen performed with nuance.

The film had a huge impact on all future bank heist movies, but it had an even broader impact on our language. Dog Day Afternoon went on to be nominated for several Academy Awards, winning for its screenplay. People remembered it.

And, they started using the title of the movie to refer to that specific time of day when it is oppressively hot, when perhaps there’s a bad feeling in the air.

So, there you have it: “dog day afternoon” is a combination of a Roman saying and an Al Pacino movie title.

Who knew? (Google knew.)

There are some other dog-friendly slogans we use that may be of some interest:

• Every dog has its day: Greek polymath Plutarch crafted a proverb saying “even a dog gets his revenge”, and Shakespeare used the phrase in Hamlet. Today, we use this most often to refer to human beings

• Barking up the wrong tree: in the 19th century in the US, racoon hunting took off. Dogs were used to help locate the racoons, but would often miss a racoon jump from one tree to another, so they’d be stuck "barking up the wrong tree"

• Let sleeping dogs lie: Geoffrey Chaucer holds the title for the first written use of the phrase in the 14th century; it’s pretty self-explanatory, but the metaphor has become used for avoiding making a situation worse

Help me think of some others in the comments!

I want to leave you with this awe-inspiring photo of Goblin, a giant bear stuck in a Jack Russell terrier’s body, leaping through the air while playing with Tiamat.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this piece as much as I had making it! Don’t forget to share a “dog saying” with us, whether or not you know where it came from.

And, by all means, if you know someone who loves dogs as much as I do, please feel free to share this by clicking below.