Shaggy dog story

Time you got around to sponsoring a child

In its original sense, a shaggy dog story is an extremely long-winded tale featuring extensive narration of typically irrelevant incidents that usually results in a pointless or absurd punchline. These stories are also known as yarns, coming from the long tradition of campfire yarns.

The canonical story is about a shaggy talking dog much discussed and much promised but slow to arrive. When the dog finally shows up and in fact talks, someone in the story says, "That dog's not so shaggy".

Shaggy dog story has come to also mean a joke where a pun is finally achieved after a long (and ideally tedious) exposition. The humor in the punch line may be due to the sudden, unexpected recognition of a familiar saying (see the examples), since the story has nothing to do with the usual context in which the phrase is normally found, yet the listener is surprised to discover it makes sense in both situations. Therefore, if the audience is not already familiar with the phrase used in the punch line, or is not aware of the multiple meanings of the words in the phrase, the surprise ending of the joke cannot be recovered by "explaining" the joke to the audience (as demonstrated by the italicized note at the end of this article).

A shaggy dog story may not have a pun at all; the humor (if any) is then derived from the fact that the joke-teller held the attention of the listeners for a long time (such jokes can take five minutes or more to tell) for no reason at all. The following examples are in fact unusually short for this kind of shaggy dog story; many shaggy dog stories of this sort contain characteristic phrases that are repeated many times (and the joke-teller will throw them in as many times as they can get away with) but turn out to have nothing whatsoever with the "punchline," such as it is.

Isaac Asimov wrote one named "Shah Guido G."

Examples of shaggy-dog stories

The Symphony Orchestra was playing a concert in the park and was in the middle of Beethoven's 9th Symphony. The bassists in the back of the orchestra decided they had a few minutes to spare before being required to play anything, so they ran across the street to the pub for a few beers. As it was quite a windy day, before they left for the pub, they found some string to wrap around their music stands to secure their music while they were gone. Once at the tavern, they could hear the music and keep up with the progress of the piece.

Rather than leisurely enjoyment of one beer, the bassists decided they would actually prefer hasty enjoyment of multiple beers. After finishing their fourth or fifth beverage they decided that they had better hurry, because the last movement of the ninth symphony was underway. They stumbled back onto the bandstand, but in their inebriated state they found they were fumbling with the string, trying to get it loose, but not having much success. The conductor saw what was happening and instantly sized up the situation: it was the bottom of the ninth, the score was tied, and the bassists were loaded.

Note: Don't get it? "It was the bottom of the ninth, the score was tied and the bases were loaded" is a standard description of an exciting baseball situation. "Loaded" is also slang for "drunk" in many English-speaking countries.

Some monks came to a small town in England and established a monastery. The townspeople were at first suspicious, but the monks explained that they had come only to do a few good deeds, such as to plant flowers and trees. The townspeople were relieved and left the monks alone.

In a few weeks, it was noticed that some of the cats and dogs were disappearing. Then, some of the little children started to disappear as well. The townspeople thought the monks were behind all of this, so they trudged up to the hilltop monastery and were let in. In the middle of the monastery greenhouse was a monstrous Venus flytrap. The townspeople were convinced that this grotesque plant was devouring their dogs, cats, and children.

The townspeople were determined to run the sinister monks out of town. They did not know how they would do it. Finally, Hugh, the blacksmith, decided to scare them out of town. He marched back up to the monastery door, looked the monk who answered the door straight in the eye, and used his hammer to smash his anvil to bits. The monks were terrified of this power and the next morning, they and the monastery were gone. The moral of the story is that only Hugh can prevent florist friars.

Note: Don't get it? This is a parody on the Smokey Bear slogan "only you can prevent forest fires."

One day a man was looking for a new pet, so he went to the pet store and asked the owner if he had a dog. The owner showed him a few dogs, but the man wasn't interested. Suddenly the pet store owner had a thought.

"I know just the dog for you," he said, and went to the last kennel in the row. "Isn't that the shaggiest dog you ever saw?" he asked.

"Why yes, that is the shaggiest dog I ever saw!" said the man. "I should take it to show my wife!" he went on, "I'll buy him."

The man bought the dog and took it home to his wife.