High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! "The dog ate my homework" is an English expression purported to be a favorite excuse made by schoolchildren explaining their failure to turn in an assignment on time. The claim of a dog eating one`s homework is inherently suspect since it is both impossible for a teacher to disprove and conveniently absolves the student giving it of any blame. Although suspicious, the claim is not absolutely beyond possibility since dogs are known to eat—or at least chew on—bunches of paper. It has grown beyond the educational context, becoming a sarcastic rejoinder to a similarly glib or otherwise insufficient or implausible explanation for a failure in any context.