New tricks

Posted by R. Berg on March 06, 2006

In Reply to: You can't teach an old dog new tricks posted by Victoria S Dennis on March 05, 2006

: : : who first said "you can't teach an old dog new tricks?"

: : Somebody dead, no doubt. It's usually impossible to trace traditional proverbs like that one to the first speaker. Researchers are doing well if they can determine what country a saying originated in.
: The Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs gives the first *known* occurrence in the form "the dogge must lerne it when he is a whelpe, or els it wyl not be; for it is harde to make an olde dogge to stoupe". Ths is froa book of advice on husbandry by a man called Fitzherbert, published in 1530. But as Smokey says, it was probably a truism even then. (VSD)

I must have done a convincing impersonation of Smokey. ~rb

• New tricks Victoria S Dennis 07/March/06