Antedating of "Shaggy Dog Story"

[Bob Fitzke]

I remember reading what was supposed to be the "original" shaggy dog story
many, many, years ago. It went:

A man advertised that he'd lost his dog and described it as being light
brown, about 55 pounds, shaggy, and answered to the name of Duke. A couple
days later a knock came on the man's door and when he opened it he saw a boy
about 12 who had a dog on a leash.
The boy said, "You advertised a lost dog?"
The man said , "Yes".
The boy said, "About 55 pounds?"
The man said "Yes".
"Answers to the name of Duke"
"Yes"
The boy said "Light brown and shaggy?"
The man looked the dog over and answered, "Not THAT shaggy."

Bob

----- Original Message -----
From: "Fred Shapiro" <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Monday, March 03, 2003 10:48 AM
Subject: Re: Antedating of "Shaggy Dog Story"


> On Sun, 23 Feb 2003, Baker, John wrote:
>
> >         There was an article about shaggy dog stories in Esquire in the
> > 1930s, reprinted in The Bedside Esquire (1940).  I can't lay my hands on
> > my copy of The Bedside Esquire (a wonderful anthology) at the moment,
> > but I believe it may have been "Don't Laugh Now," by J.C. Furnas.  It
> > includes the original shaggy dog joke, from which the genre apparently
> > takes its name.
>
> Thanks to this great lead by John Baker, here is a further antedating of
> "shaggy dog story":
>
> shaggy dog story (OED 1946)
>
> 1937 J. C. Furnas in _Esquire_ May in _The Bedside Esquire_ (1940) 167
> They say they are known as shaggy-dog stories because the story of the
> shaggy dog was the first of the lot to become popular.  That can't be
> true, since the shaggy dog, besides being a poor specimen, seems to have
> appeared fairly recently.
>
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
> Associate Librarian for Collections and     YALE DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS
>   Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press,
> Yale Law School                             forthcoming
> e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               http://quotationdictionary.com
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>