keep a dog and bark oneself

present singular third person keeps a dog and barks oneself · participle present keeping a dog and barking oneself · participle past kept a dog and barked oneself · past kept a dog and barked oneself

1. alternativeAlternative form of buy a dog and bark oneself.

   I don't see why I should keep a dog and bark myself!” Sadie's voice was so shrill that Polly winced.

   2011, Margaret Kaine, Ribbon of Moonlight

   2 more examples

   At Potsdam, Attlee was not at all bothered that trade-union leader Ernest Bevin, his new foreign minister, seemed to do all the talking while Attlee sat silent, wreathed in pipe smoke, nodding his head. “You don't keep a dog and bark yourself,” he explained, “and Ernie was a very good dog.”

   2002, Daniel Yergin, Joseph Stanislaw, The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy, Touchstone, →ISBN, page xxii

   Men, on the other hand, knowing their privileges safe in well-trained hands, can afford a tolerant attitude. Of what use to keep a dog and bark oneself? But let the dog show the faintest signs of negligence; let his “yap yap” become ever so little fainter, and instantly his alarmed master grasps the whip and prepares for fierce defence of his rights and property.

   2006, Lucy Delap, Maria DiCenzo, Leila Ryan, Feminism and the Periodical Press, 1900-1918