Wag more bark less baffles me.

October 26, 2009 1:02 PM

Where did the "Wag More, Bark Less" bumper sticker meme start? My own sightings of them have gone from extremely rare to many cars seen in every single trip I take. Is it a dog owner/pet store promotional item? Is it a political thing? Something on Oprah I missed?
posted by mathowie to pets & animals (29 comments total)

I don't know if this will help you, but I'm raising a Guide Dog puppy and Guide Dogs for the Blind passed them out to all of their raisers this summer. I had never seen those stickers before August, and now, all of a sudden, I'm seeing them everywhere.
posted by siclik at 1:06 PM on October 26

I should add, I don't know if you're around Portland or not (I'm just south of it) - it may be a regional thing though. There is a Guide Dog campus located in Boring, OR and that's where we got the stickers this summer, so I think they were distributed to a lot of raisers around Portland.
posted by siclik at 1:09 PM on October 26

I first saw it a couple years ago as a sticker you could order from BARK Magazine (trendy dog magazine), and then they started showing up in pet stores in Seattle. It's not political, but I always kind of interpreted it as the dog-owner version of "don't worry, be happy."
posted by matildaben at 1:18 PM on October 26

Billy Goat had a song in 1992 called "Fuck More, Bitch Less." I always assumed it stemmed from that. Available on their myspace page.
posted by sanko at 1:19 PM on October 26

Is it a political thing?

That's always been my interpretation.
posted by Doofus Magoo at 1:22 PM on October 26

They are everywhere here in Portland. There is also a Guide Dogs for the Blind office downtown, as well as the vans/volunteers regularly. Not sure where you get them..
posted by NotSoSimple at 1:24 PM on October 26

A song from 1992, recorded by a rock/funk/Latin band that appears to be principally known for playing naked? Yeah, that's probably the most likely explanation.
posted by box at 1:24 PM on October 26 [5 favorites has favorites]

matildaben has it. They were all over the trendy pet stores here in Asheville a couple of years ago and then they kind of faded out, although you still see them on a lot of cars. I guess they're now hitting Portland? They're not political to my knowledge; just a dog owner thing suggesting that everyone be happier and nicer. Which I guess is good and all but because I hate happy/happy shit like that my dog oriented sticker just says bark.
posted by mygothlaundry at 1:30 PM on October 26

I see them everywhere in the Portland metro area. The first store I saw them in was Forever Pets over on Broadway. Apparently, it is a registered trademark and the name of the company that produces them is Cloud Star.

I had always figured this was just some one off thing that was local to Portland, and had assumed for a long time these actually originated from the store I already mentioned. So, thanks for squashing my assumptions!

I guess they're now hitting Portland?

Might just depend on the area but I have been seeing them, and seen them available for purchase for years. My guess is that they are just getting out into wider distribution.
posted by chrisroberts at 1:33 PM on October 26

They are everywhere here in Portland. There is also a Guide Dogs for the Blind office downtown, as well as the vans/volunteers regularly. Not sure where you get them..

Seriously. There's one on my bosses door for christ's sake! I have no idea where they came from, but I just assumed it was started by one of those 'positive thinkers.'
posted by Lutoslawski at 1:33 PM on October 26

Yeah, the stickers that Guide Dogs gave us are courtesy of Cloud Star - I'm assuming it's just a clever, positive, promo item that dog lovers agree with.
posted by siclik at 1:37 PM on October 26

Been seeing them around the DC metro area a lot recently too. Never heard of it before maybe six months ago at most.

Am highly dubious of the Billy Goat hypothesis...
posted by Naberius at 1:49 PM on October 26

They've been all over Seattle for years. Sort of a muted posthorn for dog people, I always assumed.
posted by Aquaman at 1:51 PM on October 26

Datapoint: also seen in central coastal California (between LA and SF)
posted by filthy light thief at 1:52 PM on October 26

They're here in Vermont too, I see them a few times a day, feels like. Beats the crap out of those coexist ones.
posted by jessamyn at 1:53 PM on October 26

Also spotted near Philadelphia, PA.
posted by fixedgear at 1:58 PM on October 26

Billy Goat had a song in 1992 called "Fuck More, Bitch Less." I always assumed it stemmed from that.

It's even on the t-shirt (back).
posted by nomisxid at 2:06 PM on October 26

There's one car that I see all the time in San Francisco around Laurel Heights that has that. It's had the sticker for at least a year.
posted by otherwordlyglow at 2:07 PM on October 26

It's a play on a self-help-type saying you find going back a ways: "Listen more, talk less." Google Books shows lots of references in various communications and self-help books going back at least to the 1980s.
posted by Miko at 2:19 PM on October 26

Some days I miss usenet and dejanews. It used to be you could count on being able to search for a phrase and find the earliest mention or at least get you in the ballpack of the date of a media mention.

I found a blog post from June 2006 that includes the phrase (and appends "be happy" to it), though it's only an aside.

I know I've seen the bumper stickers in the Los Angeles area but never thought to wonder about the source.

I had a little luck doing Google searches for the phrase and limiting by year and 2004 seemed to come up, but many of those were in forum signatures and I don't have confidence about matching a signature in a forum as sharing the same timestamp of the post.
posted by artlung at 2:21 PM on October 26

Sorting by date I can find even more "Listen more, talk less"-es going back to the 1950s, mostly in management literature.
posted by Miko at 2:21 PM on October 26

March 2006

The seach that got this was "wag more bark less" inurl:2006 -- to find blog post mentions. Sadly, searching in this way gets a fair number of sidebars that are of less clear vintage. Searching by time is hard.
posted by artlung at 2:25 PM on October 26

I'm with Miko -- this (and probably the Billy Goat lyric too) is a wry variation on "Listen more, talk less."

Also, I'm hesitant to call a product of a single company a "meme".
posted by dhartung at 2:28 PM on October 26

My neighbor's slutty friend has one of these stickers on her car. I always thought it was a reference to shaking your ass instead of talking, because, like, you're dumb as a box of rocks, but, like, your booty is attractive.
posted by battleshipkropotkin at 2:42 PM on October 26 [2 favorites has favorites]

God, I used to own that Billy Goat shirt. I think I generally wore it under a flannel long-sleeve, though. (Not that the front was much better.)

I had not seen that bumper sticker here in DFW. I will be watching for the inevitable epidemic.
posted by Lyn Never at 4:01 PM on October 26

I have one on my laptop and it came from a box of Cloud Star biscuits that I bought at a fancy pet store in Barre, Vermont.
posted by youcancallmeal at 4:08 PM on October 26

Oh.. I associated it with "Less QQ, more pewpew."
posted by june made him a gemini at 4:09 PM on October 26

It's a registered trademark (that's one of four registrations), owned by Jennifer and Brenna Melton-Johnson of the aforementioned Cloud Star. Interview with Jennifer.
posted by schoolgirl report at 8:04 PM on October 26

BTW, I see it regularly here in New Hampshire.
posted by schoolgirl report at 8:05 PM on October 26