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Wag more bark less baffles me.
October 26, 2009 1:02 PM   RSS feed for this thread Subscribe

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) 1 user marked this as a favorite
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


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