Meaning & Analysis
While two dogs are fighting with each other over a bone, a third dog takes advantage of their distraction, swoops in, and steals the bone from both of them.
Insights
Conflict Creates Opportunity
When two parties are consumed by a dispute, they create an opportunity for an outside party to exploit their conflict and seize the prize for themselves. It's a warning that infighting makes competitors vulnerable to external threats.
The Folly of Internal Strife
The proverb illustrates the self-defeating nature of internal rivalry. The energy and resources spent fighting a competitor can lead to the loss of the very goal being fought over to someone who conserved their strength.
Strategic Patience over Brute Force
The third dog's success highlights the strategic advantage of patience and observation over direct aggression. By waiting for the opportune moment while others exhaust themselves, one can achieve victory with minimal effort.
Distraction Leads to Loss
The story serves as a potent metaphor for how being engrossed in a single-minded pursuit or conflict can blind individuals or groups to the larger context, leading to unexpected and preventable losses.
Political and Strategic Warning
This proverb serves as a timeless political and strategic maxim, illustrating how two rival powers, engrossed in their conflict, can weaken each other to the point where a third, initially uninvolved party, can emerge as the ultimate victor. The provided 17th-century note explicitly applies it to competition for social 'Place, and Preferment.'
Connection to Fable Tradition
The explicit 1592 reference to 'Esops talk' grounds the proverb in the ancient tradition of animal fables. Like Aesop's fables, it uses animal behavior—in this case, canine competition—as a clear and memorable allegory for human folly, greed, and strategic miscalculation.
The 'Tertius Gaudens' Principle
The proverb is a classic illustration of the 'tertius gaudens' or 'the third who rejoices' principle, a concept in sociology and conflict theory where a third party profits from the discord between two others. The third dog's success comes not from strength but from strategic patience and opportunism.
Psychology of Tunnel Vision
Psychologically, the proverb demonstrates the concept of 'inattentional blindness.' The two dogs are so focused on their immediate conflict that they become completely oblivious to the greater strategic threat posed by the third dog, highlighting how intense rivalry narrows perception and invites unforeseen consequences.
Rhetorical Devices
Narrative Allegory
The proverb functions as a miniature narrative or allegorical tale, presenting a clear sequence of action (conflict, distraction, opportunism) that makes its lesson both vivid and easily remembered.
Symbolism
The 'dogs' symbolize any set of competitors, and the 'bone' represents any coveted resource, such as power, wealth, or status. This simple symbolism allows the proverb to be applied to countless situations.
Situational Irony
The outcome is deeply ironic: the very actions the two dogs take to win the bone directly cause them to lose it. Their competitive struggle becomes the instrument of their mutual failure.
Triadic Structure
The proverb is built on a classic triadic structure (two in conflict, one outside). This three-part dynamic is a fundamental storytelling pattern that effectively illustrates the disruption of a stalemate by an external force.
Transcription
Quotations
Two Dogges often-times one bone would faine catch, But yet the thirde doo both them decciue.
It hath been an old saying, that whiles two doggs do strive for a bone, the thirde may come and carie it away.
I pray you, sirs, list to Esops talk: Whilest two stout dogs were striuing for a bone, There comes a cur and stole it from them both.
Tua dogs stryves for on bone in coms the thrid and taks it from them both.
(and the third whiles that they contend, taketh it away).
(According to the Old Proverb, while Two Dogs are Fighting for a Bone, a Third).
Two Dogs striving about a Bone, and the third run away with it).
Spoken when two, by their mutual Contentions, hinder each other of a Place, and Preferment, and it has faln to a third by that Means.
(Two Dogs fight for a Bone, and a third).
Cross References
- See DÜR., II, no. 753.
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
Used under CC BY-NC 3.0.