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A Dog Ate My Homework

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"I am telling you! A big, mean, homework eating dog attacked me and ate my report!" — Numbuh 5 , Codename: Kids Next Door

Basically, this is any child character explaining to their teacher why they haven't done his homework. This will be either a lie, which may or may not be believed, or a Cassandra Truth . If it is the latter, expect them to also bring in the evidence proving their case (such as moist bits from homework, or even the animal itself). The most common variant involves a dog, but other animals can be used as well.

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• Noggin's promo for Sponk! where Bob tries to tell his teacher Mrs. Kralley this.
• In Futakoi , Nozomu is always wary whenever the goat is around when he's doing his homework. No one believes Nozomu because the little bastard is nice to everyone except him.
• Inverted in Kokuhaku Game , where the dog attempts to do the homework.
• In Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf : Joys of Seasons episode 36, Sparky and Weslie both have their homework stolen by Wolffy, and Paddi, who was too lazy to actually do the work, comes up with the excuse that Wolffy also stole his homework. Mr. Slowy notices they're all using the same excuse and doesn't believe them , instead threatening to punish them all if they don't hand in their homework.
• Cards Against Humanity features a question with this phrase and an empty spot in which to substitute something else for "dog". Naturally, given the nature of the game, this is very likely to enter the realm of Refuge in Audacity .
• Archie Comics : One Jughead comic's cover gag involves Jughead not submitting any homework because he ate it. Miss Grundy is in complete disbelief over his excuse. Grundy : Let me get this straight: You ate your own homework ? Jughead : I can't help it! All those word problems were about food!
• Goof Troop : A Disney Adventures comic has PJ offering this excuse for his homework — although he has the sense to bring Chainsaw, still attached to said homework, with him.
• Viz has Playtime Fontayne use this excuse to explain his failure to deliver a bunch of monthly reports to head office.
• One strip has Nate eat bacon while at the bus stop because he missed breakfast. The bacon grease gets on his homework, local dog Spitsy smells it, and you can guess what happened from there. Nate: Wacky thing happened at the bus stop this morning... Mrs. Godfrey: I smell bacon.
• In a strip after that, Nate puts his homework in his backpack to keep it from happening again. When Spitsy gets near, he throws the bag away from the dog and shoos him away...only for the bag to land in a garbage can, then tossed into a garbage truck and crushed.
• A third strip in the arc has Nate make Francis film his homework, since Nate is aware at this point something will happen to it. Sure enough, it accidentally falls into the sewer, but Francis still has the tape... which is then snatched and destroyed by a rogue chimpanzee .
• Citizen Dog : Fergus the dig actually does eat Maggie�s homework. He has to accompany her to school to back up the story and prove she isn�t lying.
• One Close to Home strip has a student claiming his dog ate his term paper. The dog is attached to his arm.
• The Far Side : One cartoon has a class full of dogs with the teacher asking, "Well, here we go again... did anyone here not eat his or her homework on the way to school?"
• Subverted when Elizabeth tries to get Farley to eat her homework. He refuses to touch it.
• Later, Michael successfully gets Farley to eat his homework, but he has to pour bacon grease on it first.
• FoxTrot : Jason's iguana Quincy has eaten his and his siblings' homework, causing them to either force Jason to fix up their homework or tell Jason off for feeding the iguana the wrong homework assignment. In one strip, Peter collects the bits of homework left by Quincy to take to his teacher to prove it actually happened.
• Grand Avenue : In the October 6, 2014 strip, Michael has to tell his teacher that "My grandma ate my homework." For once, it's a logical explanation: his homework was an experiment involving rock candy.
• A dog sits in a classroom full of human kids saying: "I couldn't eat the homework because the kid who usually sits here did not do it."
• A dog teacher asks her dog students: "Did anyone's dad not eat their homework?"
• A kid brought an X-Ray machine to class to show the homework inside the dog.
• Madam & Eve : This is Thandi's go-to excuse for not doing her homework.
• This happened a couple of times in Nancy (at least in the Guy Gilchrist-run). It usually involved Nancy bringing her dog, Poochie, to school with her to present it to her teacher as "proof" of what happened.
• One arc has Snoopy playing World War I Flying Ace and pretend that Sally's book report is sensitive papers. She chases him and he swallows the report to keep it from falling in "enemy hands". So she takes him to school the next day and takes him up in front of the class. Sally: I might have a little trouble reading it. *shakes Snoopy* I SAID...I might have a little trouble reading it!
• A 1995 strip has Rerun planning on using this excuse the first time he's assigned homework in grade school. Lucy points out that they don't have a dog, so he says he'll borrow one. Snoopy concedes that he might do it if he writes on something actually edible. Rerun: We don't have homework in kindergarten. Lucy: I know. You're lucky. Rerun: When we do, I'll tell the teacher my dog ate my homework. Lucy: You don't have a dog. Rerun: I'll borrow a dog. Snoopy: Write your homework on a doughnut, and I'll eat it.
• Inverted in another comic where, instead of eating Charlie Brown's homework, Snoopy actually writes it.
• Private Eye : One cartoon shows a boy with a tangle of shredded paper, explaining to the teacher that his mum spiralised his homework.
• Inverted in a cartoon published in a book of puzzles: a dog is ripping through a pile of papers, and a woman is screaming: "You stupid mutt! How am I supposed to tell my students that my dog ate their homework?"
• Red and Rover : Sometimes Red will coax Rover into eating his homework when he's afraid he'll do badly. One case ended with Red cleaning up the mess after Rover couldn't keep down all the edible bribes.
• ITS MY LIFE! : "Hey Scot yuo must do are homework an yurs but well eat yurs so you get a bad grad LOL!" My [mad dog] bros sayd an started to pump at me.
• Kill la Kill AU : The 17th comic mentions that the two-year old Mako ate Nui's homework because the latter spilled food on it.
• The MLP Loops : Loop 201.14 has an unAwake Apple Bloom tearfully and truthfully inform her teacher that (an also unAwake) "Discord ate my homework, Miss Cheerilee." Cheerilee (with Fluttershy supervising) makes him redo the homework for her, and then some, as punishment.
• Oh God, Not Again! : Someone from Harry's year had to turn in their homework in tattered ruins, after the book Hagrid assigned for his class tried to eat it.
• Things I Am Not Allowed to Do at the PPC : Rule 304 prohibits teaching pets to eat assignments, under threat of death or being sent on a mission to a truly nasty badfic.

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• Spider's Web: A Pig's Tale : In an inverted example, to keep his mother from finding out he didn't do his homework, Walt makes up a lie that his homework was busy eating a dog.
• 102 Dalmatians has an example not related to school. Probation Officer Chloe Simon wants one of her charges, Ewan, to show a pay stub and he says he can't because a dog ate it. Chloe, of course, doesn't believe him and asks if he couldn't come with a better story. He tells one about being abducted by aliens at Picadilly Circus. Ewan eventually shows a photograph of him and his boss at the dog shelter he works at and a drool-covered IOU note he received instead of the pay stub because the shelter is low on funds.
• What did the student say to his math teacher after his dog ate part of his homework? "I got 99 problems, but a bitch ate one."
• "Bob, where's your homework?" the teacher asked. "My dog ate it," Bob replied. "Do you really expect me to believe that?" the teacher said. "It's true," Bob responded. "I did have to cut it up and mix it into the dog food. But it was eaten."
• What did the dog say to his classmate? "Can you help me with my homework? I ate mine."
• The Cat Ate My Gymsuit : Marcy uses the title statement as one of her excuses for not participating in PE class.
• Thief of Time mentions that no dog dares to eat homework given to Susan's students. Instead, they sniff it out and carefully bring it to her class if the kid forgot. She's like that.
• It's mentioned that at Unseen University, your homework can eat your dog.
• Family Skeleton Mysteries : Discussed and subverted in the third book, Georgia needs an excuse to get in touch with a former co-worker (in order to get information on the murder victim), and decides to open the conversation by asking him for copies of the lesson plans they'd worked out together. She says that "I couldn't claim that Byron note  Her daughter Madison's dog. had eaten my homework, but nobody argued with a hard disk crash."
• Rod Allbright Alien Adventures : Book 1 is titled Aliens Ate My Homework (and they really did, too - one of them got hungry, and didn't realize the piece of paper he was snacking on was a math assignment due that day). It doesn't end well, but the aliens appreciate how the apparent Refuge in Audacity helped cover for the other weird things that were happening.
• Roys Bedoys : In �Stop Blaming People, Roys Bedoys!�, when Roys starts blaming others for why he didn�t do his homework, Truly jokingly asks if his dog (Charlie) ate it. Roys says, �Maybe he did�.
• Schooled in Magic : At Wizarding School , it's more common for the excuse to be "my homework ate my dog." It's still a cliche.
• The Trouble With Demons : A student tells his teacher that a Krog (a lesser demon that eats paper and ink) ate his homework. After a thorough quizzing from the teacher (who is the head of the demonology department) on the alleged Krog, the excuse is accepted.
• Batwoman (2019) : Lampshaded. Kate Kane in her Batwoman disguise finds herself making out with her ex-girlfriend Crow Security officer Sophie Moore, which is a bad idea for a whole lot of reasons . She goes to break up with her only for them to end up smooching again before events are interrupted by Sophie's homophobic mother paying a visit . The next day Kate gives an unconvincing explanation as to why things didn't go according to plan. Luke Fox says sarcastically, "So, dog ate my breakup?"
• Even Stevens : Ren Stevens, when having to be paired up with a Pig, ended up having her homework eaten by the pig. She tries to explain this to her teacher, with predictable results.
• Full House : In one episode, the Tanners' newly-acquired puppy Comet eats DJ's book report, but DJ is smart enough to know it won't fly even if it is the truth so she decides to tell her teacher Michelle ate it.
• One installment of It's Me or the Dog focuses on a family with kids and a Pomeranian-chihuahua mix with severe resource-guarding issues and a particular fondness for making off with paper. The narrator quips that these may be the only kids in the world who can literally say that the dog ate their homework.
• Married... with Children invoked this trope in an episode where Peggy goes Back to School because she didn't pass home economics ( no surprises there ). At a scene, a teacher asks the class to wake Kelly, who quickly responds that her dog ate her homework. Later on, when Peggy is introduced to class, both she and Kelly fall asleep and the teacher asks the class to wake them both, who respond that the dog ate their homework. Later, Al literally eats Peg's homework (a roast rack of lamb).
• M*A*S*H : In a season 10 episode, Hawkeye gets in serious trouble because a goat ate the entire payroll (and, naturally, no one believes him; he is charged with stealing it). Later, Hawkeye is finally proved innocent when the goat subsequently eats a general's report on the issue. Seems sort of the same thing in spirit.
• Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide : One episode has Ned giving tips on good excuses. He comments that saying a dog ate your homework is a bad excuse... right before a dog eats his homework. The rest of the episode has him trying to find the dog and convince his teacher Mr. Sweeney that he wasn't lying.
• Person of Interest : Inverted in a fourth-season episode where Bear eats Finch's students' papers before Finch can grade them.
• So Random! : The debut sketch of the apparent Bad Liar Rufus has him insist his dog ate his homework, then clarifies that a monkey took his homework and fed it to his dog. This turns out to be true, weirdly.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine : In " The Nagus ", Nog tries to explain why he hasn't done his homework. The only excuse he comes up with is that "Vulcans stole his homework".
• Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad : In "A Virus Ate My Homework", unlike what the title might suggest, Sam's homework isn't eaten. His little sister paints it over. Fortunately, the emergency caused by the virus makes the students go home earlier, allowing Sam another day to redo the homework.
• Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters from Beverly Hills : In one episode, one of the heroes was doing her homework when they've been called into battle. She then took the homework with her, eventually leading to the homework being eaten by the monster. The teacher later sarcastically asked if a dog ate her homework. She answered it was a monster and the teacher took it for sarcasm.
• Wizards of Waverly Place : Briefly mentioned in an episode when the Russos adopt a dragon that's been transformed into a beagle. At one point, the dragon dog sets Alex's homework on fire, to which she comments: "The dog burned my homework, that's a new one."
• The Wonder Years : In one episode, Kevin has to do a school assignment involving a potato. His new dog eats it, and the teacher reacts in disbelief that his dog ate his homework.

    Music  --> M�tley Cr�e : This happens to the kid at the beginning of the video for "Smokin' in the Boys' Room".--> -->

• The Unbelievable Truth : Invoked in Holly Walsh's lecture on dogs, where she claims George R.R. Martin's dog ate the manuscript for The Winds of Winter , possibly as a preemptive measure after having seen season 7 of Game of Thrones .
• Another Case Solved : The "Comic Calamities" case involves retrieving a rare comic book which, when the player character finds it, is missing a few pages. When you confront the artist about this, he babbles "My hamster ate them! Really!"
• Math Rescue : A couple of word problems feature this. One plays this straight with the logical consequence of the student having to redo their homework. The other turns it on its head by having the teacher's dog eat homework that said teacher was grading.
• Medieval Cop : This is the talking dog Phil's favorite excuse for missing notes or evidence.
• Persona 4 : The main character can eat his little cousin's science project.
• Rivals of Aether : In Lovers of Aether , Absa has a problem with her homework actually being eaten. By her .
• Forestdale : In a gambit to be excused from gym class, Izabell claims that her Dalmatian friend Dallas ate her gym clothes with a fake letter from her mom as proof. Needless to say, it doesn't work and Dallas calls her out on such blatant stereotyping.
• Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal , "Homework": "The dog ate my homework" gets a different meaning when the homework was to make a chocolate sculpture.
• A semi-reoccurring gag in early Monster High webisodes was Clawdeen, a werewolf, blaming her brother for eating her homework.
• Mentioned in episode 15 of RWBY Chibi when Ruby goes to get Zwei, she tells him "C'mon, let's go eat Weiss' homework!"
• Connected to the above, Jane notes that one of the obscure dates covered by the Calendar Man in Batman: Arkham City is Saint Roch's Day.
• The Amazing World of Gumball : Darwin and Gumball said their dad ate their homework. Naturally, no one believes them, and naturally they were right ("I thought it would make me smart! ")
• American Dragon: Jake Long : In "Fu and Tell", when Haley brings Fu Dog in to her class's show and tell, one boy asks Fu to eat his homework. Fu obliges, commenting, "Tastes like a D minus."
• Angela Anaconda : One episode has Angela's dog actually eat her homework (her mom accidentally spilled bacon grease on it while her dad was looking it over), but of course no one believes her.
• Animaniacs : This is a joke waiting to happen when the Warners attend school. Even when it was their first day. Turned out the dog was Wakko . Teacher: Bad dog! Gimme that! Wakko: Grrrr...
• Arthur : In one episode, the Brain deliberately flouts several superstitions to show there is nothing in them, then has a terrible streak of bad luck, including having a dog eat his homework, which causes him extra distress because he knows how the report will be received.
• Bad Dog : In "Bad Dog Ate My Homework", Penelope spent most of the episode trying to keep Berkeley from eating a hybrid plant that she grew for school.
• Beverly Hills Teens : In "The Dog Ate My Homework", the dog belongs to Bianca , and is sent by her deliberately in order to make Larke stay at home instead of competing against her. Also subverted, since for awhile, Larke's own cat is blamed, the homework was on a floppy, and there was no attempt to use the excuse.
• Catdog : One episode titled directly after the trope is devoted to the citizens of Nearburg making Dog eat their homework, which Cat exploits for their money. However, when the big one comes where Dog must eat the President's written speech before he has to give it, he becomes sick from his growing crisis of conscious, and Cat is forced to eat it himself. This turns out to be a bad decision as the entire crowd finds the idea of a cat eating homework ludicrous and boo the President off the stage (and back into the clowning business).
• ChalkZone : The villain Skrawl forces Penny into siding with him by threatening to have her homework eaten by a dog in "Chalk Queen".
• Codename: Kids Next Door : Numbuh Five has a genuine problem of her homework getting eaten every day by a dog she passes by on the way to school. She has enough and decides to take the problem head on. Turns out that it's a rival classmate who can morph into a weredog and eats Five's homework out of spite, and the teacher is in on it, too . And, even then, it's only because Numbuh Five has been helping Numbuh Four with his homework (since he usually does poorly in school.) This turns out to be useful for the KND because it turns out that poorly-done homework actually makes weredogs sick.
• Danger Mouse : In DangerMouse on the Orient Express , Penfold loses a valuable document to a hungry fish in a Venice canal. When he's captured by Greenback's agents he readily tells them that a fish ate the document. Nobody believes him.
• Dennis the Menace (UK) : In "The Show Mustn't Go On", Dennis claims that he had to feed his homework to a giant paper-eating alien bug to prevent it from destroying Beanotown.
• Doug : When the kids are performing in the school talent show, Skeeter plans to play an ocarina he made out of one of the school cafeteria's dinner rolls. He's forced to withdraw from talent show when Roger's cat, Stinky, accidentally eats it. Mr. Dink doesn't believe him. Mr. Dink : Not the old "cat ate my ocarina" excuse. At least be original.
• The Emperor's New School has a variant where Yzma plans on forcing Kuzco to give this excuse, and even lampshades on and exploits its Dead Horse status: Kronk : Come on, "A llama ate my homework"? It's the oldest excuse in the book. Yzma : Exactly! It's so old, no one will believe him.
• Referenced and narrowly subverted in the George Shrinks episode "Journey to the Centre of the Garden." George and Becky are recording the growth cycle of mung beans, but find their work impeded by birds pecking around. George manages to shoo one off, following it up with a quip: George : Who's gonna believe a bird ate our homework?
• Histeria! had a sketch detailing John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men manuscript getting torn up (see Real Life folder), with kids everywhere congratulating him on inventing such a brilliant excuse.
• Jorel's Brother : In "Zazazila", the Extreme Omnivore dog Zazá eats Jorel's brother's essay about how he would change the world; his dad Edson even points out how the "lamest excuse ever" actually came true. Jorel's brother decides to make another identical essay... and puts a size-increasing pill inside it so he can enter the dog and get the essay back. While he does get it back eventually, Zazá had been a giant for long enough that she messed up the entire structure of the continents, a change that is kept permanent in the series.
• KaBlam! anthologized the Jetcat episode "Project: Evil" where Tod may have tell his teacher that the hyenas that threaten eat him ate his notebook.
• Kick Buttowski tells his teacher that a dog ate his homework, and it's the truth. A vicious little dog did (and is shown in Flashback ) eat his homework.
• Martha Speaks : In a between-episode segment, T.D. brings Martha the dog to school and asks her to say that she ate his homework. There's also a song sung by Helen saying that Martha ate her music homework, which she actually does in the episode "Martha Sings".
• �Mucha Lucha! : Before Rikochet can present his Day of the Dead diorama to class, his pet Masked Dog ate it. The fact that there was Pan de Muerto on it may have caused it.
• Pet Alien : "When TV Ruled the World" has Tommy get an F after Gumpers ate his homework. Apparently, the teacher didn't take "aliens ate my homework" as a valid excuse.
• Puff the Magic Dragon : In Puff in the Land of Living Lies , Sandy lies to her teacher that a dragon stole her homework and ate it with ketchup and mustard. At the beginning of the special, Puff acts out this lie, before explaining that it was a lie.
• Recess : TJ tries to have his teacher believe this showing his homework shredded and drooled (which was done by him and never started the assignment). She didn't believe it since he still had a scrap of paper on his lip. In the same episode, Spinelli uses the typical "dog ate it" response, and Vince claims his brother ate it . Vince: My brother ate it! Miss Grotke: Eaten by a family member? That's a new one .
• The Secret Files of The Spy Dogs had Sheela's dog eating her homework... on purpose. Because she has accidentally created a formula that seizes the king-side doggie food packs, Von Rubie tries to rewrite the homework from scratch, but when his mistress arrives... Needless to say, the trope happens, as well as Rubie escaping through the window.
• In " Bart the Murderer ", the dog really did eat Bart's homework just before he left for school. "You ate my homework? ... I didn't know dogs really did that."
• When the family dog, Santa's Little Helper, starts working for the police, Bart has no choice but to eat his own homework.
• In an episode where Bart's teacher starts dating Ned Flanders and saw Santa's Little Helper, she asked Bart if that's the dog that eats his homework. Trying to convince her by giving the dog a homework for him to eat. The dog refuses. Bart then covers the homework with dog food. The dog ate the food, cleaned the paper, and signaled the answer of a math question.
• When Bart is nominated for class president and asked to give a speech, he says the dog ate his speech.
• SpongeBob SquarePants : Some children's homework fell victim to the Alaskan Bullworm on the corresponding episode .
• Tales from the Cryptkeeper : There's a boy who, instead of using a dog, uses a monster as an excuse. He tells a homework-eating monster another monster showed up before. After a trip to monster land, the boy confesses and the monster takes him home and makes him do two homeworks: one to be eaten and another one to be taken to school.
• Uncle Grandpa : "Uncle Grandpa Ate My Homework" begins with the title character eating a boy's diorama of Ancient Egypt, which he needed to pass the class. Naturally, Uncle Grandpa tries to help, and naturally things go horribly wrong.
• What A Cartoon! Show : One short has a cowboy telling his teacher his dog ate his homework. Obviously, she doesn't believe him, but he tries to prove it by pulling out a dog chewing on a piece of loose-leaf paper. The teacher responds by lecturing him on bringing pets to class.
• Many dogs like to chew on things and some find that textbooks and other homework actually are worth eating.
• This trope has been slowly replaced with "My printer broke" or "My email stopped working" in high schools. For adults, it's something like, "my social media was hacked", when they post something controversial.
• A T-shirt available on Threadless features an X-ray of a dog. Inside the dog is a math book, a protractor, a pencil, and so on.
• If you take a culinary class, this is a very real possibility. And it might not just be the dog. You might have to say, "My roommate ate my homework."
• While filming Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom , Steven Spielberg literally had to fill out an insurance claim for one of the costumes with the words " dress eaten by elephant ". It can almost be seen in the movie, during the campfire at night scene - the elephant's head is just out of frame as it's eating the dress in front of the entire crew, who are somehow not bursting into laughter.
• "My dog ate my homework" is gradually giving way to "My bird ate my homework." Nobody is quite sure why birds such as cockatiels are so compelled to nibble on loose papers.
• John Steinbeck had to rewrite half of Of Mice and Men after his dog Toby partially destroyed the first manuscript.

Alternative Title(s): The Dog Ate My Homework

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Where Did The Phrase “The Dog Ate My Homework” Come From?

Dogs are known as man’s best friend. Dogs keep us safe, are hard workers … and can provide a handy excuse in a pinch. Maybe that’s why versions of the classic expression the dog ate my homework have been around for hundreds of years.

Today, the dog ate my homework is used as a stock example of the kind of silly excuses schoolchildren give for why their work isn’t finished. Very rarely do people say, “the dog ate my homework” and expect it to be taken literally; they use the expression as an example of a typically flimsy excuse.

So where did the phrase come from?

Forrest Wickman, a writer for Slate , describes the legend of the 6th-century Saint Ciarán of Clonmacnoise as the alleged first recorded “the dog ate my homework” story. According to the tale, Saint Ciarán had a tame young fox that would take his writings to his master for him. One day, the fox grew up and decided to eat the leather strap binding the writings together instead. Still, this tale is more Garden-of-Eden parable and less terrible schoolchild excuse.

The notion that dogs will eat just about anything, including paper, turns up in lots of stories over the centuries. An example comes from The Humors of Whist , published in 1808 in Sporting Magazine . In the story, the players are sitting around playing cards when one of them remarks that their companion would have lost the game had the dog not eaten the losing card. Good boy.

Some attribute the creation of the dog ate my homework to a joke that was going around at the beginning of the 20th century. In a tale found as far back as an 1894 memoir by Anglican priest Samuel Reynolds Hole, a preacher gives a shortened version of a sermon because a dog got into his study and ate some of the pages he had written. However, the clerk loved it because they had been wanting the preacher to shorten his sermons for years.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary , the first example of the dog ate my homework excuse in print can be found in a speech given by retiring headmaster James Bewsher in 1929 and published in the Manchester Guardian : “It is a long time since I have had the excuse about the dog tearing up the arithmetic homework.” The way this comment is phrased suggests that the whole dog ate my homework story had been around for some time before it was put in print.

When was the word homework created?

But in order for a dog to eat homework specifically, homework had to be invented (oh, and how we wish it hadn’t been). True, the word homework , as in what we call today housework , appears as early as 1653. But homework , as in school exercises to be done at home, isn’t found until 1852. Once we had homework , it was only a matter of time before the dog was accused of eating it.

How we use this phrase now

No matter the origin, sometime in the 1950s, the expression became set as the dog ate my homework . This inspired any number of riffs on the theme, like my cow ate my homework or my brother ate my homework . In the 1960s, the dog ate my homework continued to gain popularity. The expression popped up a couple times in politics over the years, like when President Reagan said to reporters in 1988, “I had hoped that we had marked the end of the ‘dog-ate-my-homework’ era of Congressional budgetry … but it was not to be.”

It seems unlikely that the dog ate my homework was ever used consistently or frequently by actual schoolchildren. In fact, it’s the unlikeliness of the story that makes it so funny and absurd as a joke. Instead, teachers and authority figures appear to have cited the dog ate my homework many times over the years as such a bad excuse they can’t believe students are really using it.

In the 21st century, students don’t spend as much time working with physical pen and paper as they once did. That may contribute to the decline in the use of the phrase. So, maybe soon we’ll see a new equally absurd phrase pop up. Come on Zoomers, you’ve got this.

WATCH: What's A Unique Homework Routine That Works?

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CBBC commissions panel show for kids

Monday 9th September 2013, 2:43pm

CBBC has commissioned a new panel show format aimed at children.

The Dog Ate My Homework is described as "the show that finally puts the cool back into school".

The ten-part series will be hosted by Iain Stirling . The young stand-up comedian will already be familiar to the channel's viewers, having served as an on-screen continuity links presenter next to puppet character Hacker T. Dog, and as a presenter of shows including Help! My Supply Teacher Is Magic .

The Scottish comedian left his CBBC role earlier in the year to concentrate more on his stand-up career, and most recently performed the show Ian Stirling: At Home at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. However, at the time of leaving his CBBC role, Stirling did indicate he would be looking to work with the channel again, and he hosted a pilot episode of this new panel show format earlier in the year.

Having now commissioned a full series based on that pilot, CBBC Commissioner Cheryl Taylor , who previously held the role of BBC Comedy Commissioner, has described the series as "the CBBC answer to Mock The Week ".

The format will see two teams facing "a mischievous mix of tongue-in-cheek comedy, off-the-wall questions, nonsensical studio games, and slapstick challenges". Each team will be composed of comedians and celebrity guests, with a 'junior sidekick' selected to help too.

The BBC describes The Dog Ate My Homework as "the school-based panel show that lets you down, lets CBBC down, and above all, lets itself down", adding that it is a series which "throws out the text books along with the rule book, and turns everything about school on its head".

The Dog Ate My Homework will be filmed in Glasgow from the end of this month, with recordings starting as early as 8:30am. To apply to be in the audience see our free tickets page

Following the success of Horrible Histories , CBBC is undertaking a commissioning strategy around the ethos "laugh yourself smart". Other comedy formats in development for the channel include a 'geek sitcom' pilot called Totally Square .

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My Dog Ate My Homework

From the book The Biggest Burp Ever

My dog ate my homework. That mischievous pup got hold of my homework and gobbled it up.

My dog ate my homework. It’s gonna be late. I guess that the teacher will just have to wait.

My dog ate my homework. He swallowed it whole. I shouldn’t have mixed it with food in his bowl.

 — Kenn Nesbitt

Copyright © 2014. All Rights Reserved.

Reading Level: Grade 1

Topics: Animal Poems , School Poems

Poetic Techniques: Irony , Narrative Poems

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I’m a teacher — and my dog ate my students’ homework.

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Would you look at that: The dog really did eat their homework.

A teacher was left shocked after her pet pooch devoured her class’ assignments, leaving paper fragments all over her kitchen floor.

The photo went viral in a Reddit thread with the caption, “When you’re a teacher and your dog eats everyone’s homework.”

The post earned more than 1,100 upvotes and people on the platform were quick to crack a few jokes about the puppy mishap.

“How the tables turn,” one user said.

“You should show this picture to your class. They’d enjoy it (as long as you give everyone good marks for it),” commented someone else.

“But the real question is … do the kids believe you or do they think you’re making an excuse because you forgot to grade their homework?” quipped another.

While it’s unclear whether the Reddit poster, who did not reveal specifics, really is a teacher or not, it didn’t stop readers’ imaginations.

“I would have LOVE for a teacher to come in and say, ‘Kids. You all got As. My dog ate your homework,'” one user giggled, while another said: “Good dog! Now everyone gets an ‘A.'”

“Your dog: ‘See? I got rid of all this so you have more time to pet me!'” joked someone else.

Although the age-old excuse is usually just a fib, hungry hounds have been known to actually eat kids’ homework. In fact, just two years ago, a student in the Philippines fell victim to his dogs’ late-night munchies — all of which was caught on video.

The two pups played a round of tug of war with the papers until it was in scraps, making a confusing sight for the student, Darren James Lamban, when he awoke the next morning.

While he might be one of the only people whose devious pet has truly snacked on their homework, the excuse dates back to the beginning of the 20th century.

In a 1905 edition of a Welsh-American magazine, music critic William ApMadoc recited an old anecdote of a minister whose sermon met the same distasteful fate — being eaten by his dog.

But it wasn’t until a 1929 speech penned by a retiring headmaster, James Bewsher, that the tale of homework-eating pups was seen.

“It is a long time since I have had the excuse about the dog tearing up the arithmetic homework,” his speech, which was published in the Manchester Guardian, read.

Other sources claim John Steinbeck once begged an editor to extend the deadline for “Of Mice and Men” in 1936 due to the manuscript’s unfortunate bout with the author’s Irish setter, who took a hefty bite — or two — out of the book.

Or so he said.

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