The Dog Ate My Homework

The first known time that anyone used the “dog ate my homework” excuse was, according to writing expert and educationist, Christopher Simpson, in 1835. The student who was said to have uttered the now famous explanation for the absence of homework was Henry Pennywhistle, but other sources attribute the words to a story about a Welsh minister in 1905, and yet another source points to Saint Tyron who in the fifth century found a fox with whom he made friends. At some point, the fox ate his psalms, but “the fox ate my scriptures,” doesn’t quite have the same ring. Whatever. The quote spawned a cottage industry of creative excuses, many of which became children’s books (“Godzilla Ate My Homework,” “A Dinosaur Ate My Homework,” “Aliens Ate My Homework,” “My Teacher Ate My Homework,” and so on).

We all know that sometimes, dogs really do eat things they ought not to touch, and “the dog ate my homework” has no doubt been heard by countless teachers over the years. Perhaps many of them suppressed a smile the first time they heard it.  When a Nobel Prize winning author says, “the dog ate my great American classic,” however, it’s unlikely that anyone smiles.

As dog-owning authors go, John Steinbeck was known for to have criss-crossed the country with his Poodle, “Charley.”  The book resulted in Travels with Charley: In Search of America.  Steinbeck had also owned an Airedale Terrier, but it was neither a Poodle or an Airedale that chewed up the first draft of his novel, Of Mice and Men.   Of the incident, Steinbeck wrote on May 27, 1936:

“Minor tragedy stalked. My setter pup, left alone one night, made confetti of about half of my manuscript book. Two months work to do over again. It set me back. There was no other draft. I was pretty mad, but the poor little fellow may have been acting critically. I didn’t want to ruin a good dog for a manuscript I’m not sure is good at all… I’m not sure Toby didn’t know what he was doing when he ate the first draft. I have promoted Toby-dog to be a lieutenant-colonel in charge of literature.”

All that remained of the manuscript was a fragment from the first chapter in which Steinbeck introduced his central characters. In 2023, the fragment was sold in New York by Bonhams auction house for $13,000,  more than six times its estimated value. The fragment, which contained portions of the famous “dead mouse scene,”  foreshadowed the rest of the plot, but it wasn’t the only piece to have survived the dog’s “snack.” Another is held at the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies at San Jose State University.

The now infamous dog was “Toby” whom Steinbeck had described as an Irish Setter, but the dog’s photo suggests otherwise.

Image: “Dog Ate my Homework” is available on a t-shirt and hoodie here. 

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