Honestly I’ve never actually slowed down to truly parse the phrase “screw the pooch”. Well, now I have, and also fuck you because I used to be innocent 😭
Apparently, it’s the tamer version of “fuck the dog”.
Holy shit. I thought I was being witty using that idiom instead of screwed the pooch. TIL it’s already a thing, moreover the origin story of screwed the pooch.
The origin doesn’t include actually having sex with a dog though. “Fuck the dog” was just an expression for being lazy and “screw the pooch” simply makes it more palatable.