"outside of a dog"

[Baker, John M.]

Google Books has an earlier example of this, in full text, from Boys' Life, p. 78 (Feb. 1954).  It's on the magazine's Think and Grin page, which appears to be a collection of jokes sent in by readers (though I don't see a specific invitation to readers to contribute).  The quip is in more or less the canonical form:
 
     A book is man's best friend 
outside of a dog, and inside of a
dog it's too dark to read.--_Jim
Brewer, Cleveland, O._
 
 
If, as I suppose, this was submitted by one of the magazine's juvenile readers (presumably Jim Brewer of Cleveland), then it is likely that he heard it elsewhere, rather than making it up.  Be that as it may, Boys' Life had a large circulation and is a plausible avenue for the phrase's initial popularization.
 
 
John Baker
 

________________________________

From: American Dialect Society on behalf of Arnold Zwicky
Sent: Sun 6/13/2010 10:47 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: "outside of a dog"



with citation of ADS-L, at the end of this posting on my blog:

http://arnoldzwicky.wordpress.com/2010/06/13/the-commencement-pun-crop/

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