I’m Fixing to Run Like a Scalded Dog

I’m fixing to run like a scalded dog!

This saying originated back when people used to cook, can, and preserve food outside, and occasionally a hungry dog that was sniffing around for scraps would get some boiling water spilled on it accidentally, or as I’m ashamed to admit, on purpose, by some impatient or mean human who wanted the animal out from underfoot.

But how does a scalded dog run, you might ask? The connotation of the statement certainly conjures up visions of a dog getting boiling water spilled on itself, and at the instant the scalding occurred abandoning the scene with speed reminiscent of the speed of light—like a blue streak.

However, the saying may be used as a warning to help avoid an actual scalding, as well as describing the speed of movement which occurs after a scalding.

For instance, when I was a little boy my momma would warn me that when I was walking down the road and saw a snake that I should run like a scalded dog! I knew she meant in the opposite direction. And it was good advice, too, because I had been chased by a coachwhip snake before. Some folks will tell you they won’t chase you. They are the ones who have never been chased.

A lot of folks should have used this saying as a warning which would have saved themselves a whole passel of grief, and sometimes even death.

Another, for instance, The Boy General, Armstrong Custer, although he had been reduced in rank to Lieutenant Colonel at the time, in 1876, he and the entire Seventh Calvary should have run like a bunch of scalded dogs the instant they observed the tip of the first feather at Little Bighorn.

My Cousin Elroy told me he should have run like a scalded dog the first time he set eyes on his first wife. He said he ran up on her over in the lovely town of Nanafalia, Ala., on the banks of the Tombigbee River. At the time, he was over that way on a timber surveying job, and after their first night together at a combination catfish place and juke joint, he was convinced she was the reason God made Alabama.

They got married in a fever, but it wasn’t long before Elroy discovered she still had a husband who had left Miss Alabama with four kids and enough debt to drag her doublewide off its concrete blocks and sink it in the river. A few weeks later, once Elroy had discovered he wasn’t really married at all, even before the marital bliss had faded, on one dark night he lit out of Nanafalia like a scalded dog!

In life, there are lots of things we all have to do which we really would rather avoid, put off, or not have to do all. Some of them are more annoying than others though, and some of them are more tiresome to one person than they are to another. Two more for instances: Some people enjoy doing yard work and there are others who take pleasure in shopping. Neither one of these fall into my category of pleasurable activity.

So I hope it’s understandable that while I was relaxing near the back door when I heard my wife call out, “As soon as you get around to cutting the grass I want to go to the mall,” I took immediate action. You know what I was fixing to do—that’s right, like a scalded dog!