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In English, there is an idiom called "Love me, love my dog" of which Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary gives the following definition: (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/love-me-love-my-dog)

said to warn someone that if they want to be in a relationship with you, they must be willing to accept everything about you

I think this idiom can also be applicable to other not-in-a-relation situations, say.

If you truly like your teaching job, you must be able to stand students' naughtiness and once-in-a-while mischief, because love me, love my dog.

  • Is my understanding about other not-in-a-relation situations correct?

  • This is mainly what I want to ask. Any idiom or phrase that can describe the opposite of "Love me, love my dog" with the meaning:

said to describe the situation in which if you hate something or someone, even if there are great qualities or merits in that, you still have a strong hatred towards it.

Is "Hate me, hate my dog" OKAY ? Like the following example:

You cost me a golden opportunity to be admitted into Harvard University years ago. Now even though you are willing to give me a big sum of money, I will not forgive you. As the idiom goes: hate me, hate my dog.

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  • Could you please include a link to your source(s)?
    – Arm the good guys in America
    Oct 30, 2017 at 13:43
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    source to the definition ? Just edited the quesiton.
    – Sleeping On a Giant's Shoulder
    Oct 30, 2017 at 13:46
  • As you see it, what is the dog in your Harvard example?
    – Arm the good guys in America
    Oct 30, 2017 at 15:20
  • You killed my father, prepare to die.
    – jxh
    Oct 30, 2017 at 16:55
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    Fun fact: "Love me and love my dog" appears as a proverb in the 1678 edition of John Ray, A Collection of English Proverbs. Ray says it comes from a French source: "Qui aime Jean aime son chien," although he also cites "Spesse volte si ha rispetto al cane per il padrone." People have been making relationships conditional on affection for their dogs for a long time.
    – Sven Yargs
    Oct 31, 2017 at 7:09

2 Answers 2

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Wolfgang Mieder, A Dictionary of American Proverbs (1992) lists one dog-centric proverb that recasts the "Love me, love my dog" saying in a negative form: Strike my dog and you strike me. Here is the entry for that expression in Mieder's dictionary:

Strike my dog and you strike me. Rec[orded] dist[ribution]: Ala[bama], G[eorgi]a, 1st cit[ation]: 1588 Discourse Upon the Present State of France. 20c[entury] coll[ections]: O[xford] D[ictionary of] E[nglish] P[roverbs] [1970] 781, Stevenson[, The Macmillan Book of Proverbs, Maxims and Familiar Phrases (1948)] 607:6.

Since the only two places where Mieder identifies recent instances of the proverb are the contiguous Deep South states of Alabama and Georgia—although it appears as far back as 1588 in an English book about France—the expression is evidently not in widespread use today.

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I think a pretty good opposite response to "love me, love my dog" would be "F*ck you and the horse you rode in on." Naturally, it's not polite, but everyone has probably heard it before.

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  • If the OP is British we can say Bugger and have it be less offensive (or at least to American speakers)!
    – Skooba
    Oct 30, 2017 at 15:03

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