Git along little dogies
Whoopie-ti-yi-yo, a cattle call from an old cowboy song. Git along little dogies. Ever wonder just what a dogie is, or was? In cowboy slang, a dogie is a motherless calf. That much is sure. One story I read has it that after a particularly harsh winter, many orphaned calves were weaned too early, leading to problems digesting grass. That in turn led to swollen bellies, which were referred to as dough-guts. The cattle with dough-guts were called dogies. There are other stories. A Spanish term for lariat is dogal, so maybe dogie came from dogal. We know that other cowboy words came from the Spanish. For instance vaquero, a Spanish horse-backed cattle herder, likely morphed into buckaroo. Time for a cowboy tune…
Here’s Woody Guthrie, from 1944
How about Roy Rogers, from 1940
I’m going to finish off this post with one more – a yodeling version by cowboy singer extraordinaire, Don Edwards
27th Street 