“As fit as a fiddle”.

I’ve yet to meet a violin that is capable of aerobic or anaerobic exercise. 

Keeping a dog in the part of a butchers shop where meat is prepared would surely be illegal?

• It is not illegal for a butcher to own a dog
• There is no suggestion that the dog lives in the butcher shop
• Meat offcuts are easily transportable to the butcher's home where the dog lives
• That is all

Erm, no. Isn’t the point that the butcher sells every possible cut of meat, leaving his poor mutt to survive on scraps and bones, and not too many of those iirc.

Whereas round my way you can’t move for skunks getting ratted on diamond white and special brew 

*eats dinner off whistle*
 

Tbf I always thought it meant that a butcher’s dog had a decent diet and didn’t eat stuff out of a can. 

Apparently phrase was first identified in a 1859 type of Roger’s Profanisaurus called ‘A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant and Vulgar Words’ by John Camden Hotten.

The standard of hygiene in aforesaid butchers shops in those times was probably a bit squiffy.

A worrying number of refs to B Johnson liking the phrase, and you can imagine when he uses it. Fat fvcking fvcker. Girls who fvkc fat men, have you no shame?

Probably fairer to say the dog got scraps but plenty of them.

Bertha dear, have a lie down. 

Happy to admit I googled the Act.  Need coffee.

I’ve never understood this bizarre phrase either tbh, Rare agree w Marshall.

Going off the raw dog food craze I assume this dog would be fit. So the simile is fine and nothing to see. 

I always assumed it simply meant that the dog would be well fed with reasonably healthy food.

Probably Victorian (or earlier) when the idea was that eating lots of meat was the healthiest thing to do?!

Jordan B Peterson has a meat only diet and he is in fine ... oh, no he has gone insane.

I'm grateful for girls who f*ck fat men!

It's my kind nature and GSOH that gets  me laid. (Or used to.)

This must date back to the days when butchers would drive their carts to the knacker's yard and back to the market, and maybe to stately homes etc.  The dogs trotting along would have been very fit.