Like a dog at a fair

Posted by James Briggs on September 23, 2007

In Reply to: Like a dog at a fair posted by Trewf on September 23, 2007

: My late father,who worked in a travelling fair around the north of England in his very early teens, around the 1930s used to say to us as kids" you are in and out like a dog at a fair". He used this if we were dashing about. I just wondered if anyone else had heard this phrase used, or is it one that Dad made up?

My mother and Grandmother used this phrase regularly all their lives - my mother died aged 92 in 2000. I have no idea as to the origin. Perhaps it's as simple as the fact that dogs really did rush in and around fair grounds in earlier times.