Alternative take on “3 dog night”

In today’s Slice column, I mentioned that I had always heard the expression “three dog night” as referring to frontiersman sleeping with canines to stay warm in winter.

Not sure where I got that. A Jack London story maybe.

I’ll just assume here that you realize we are not talking about the band.

Anyway, my friend Ken Stout is familiar with a different explanation.

This is what he heard: Indian tribes always had a few dogs in camp and when the food supply was low they would slaughter a dog or two to cook. A 3 dog night meant a large feast of dog.

“We have two cats and two dogs,” Ken wrote. “Occasionally all of them climb on the bed; however we have never eaten one of them.”