[Ads-l] see a man about a horse or dog

[David Daniel]

Going back to the 1950s when I was a kid, my dad would say he had to "see a
man about a horse" when going to the bathroom. Thus, of course, I have spent
my whole life with that in my going-to-the-bathroom repertoire. But an Irish
friend of mine, when in the same situation, says "see a man about a dog."
We've had some humorous exchanges over the "correctness" of the two
versions, so I checked them out. Both get a similar number of Google hits
(horse - 679,000, dog - 721,000), but many sources claim it is British
usage. Yet there was my dad, born and raised in Indiana, saying it on a
regular basis back in the 1950s and onward. It's possible he picked it up in
England in WWII, but I have no way of knowing. Does anyone out there have
any experience with the expression or info about which side or sides of the
pond it came from?
DAD

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