“You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog, cryin’ all the time ...”

— Elvis

I have been visited by The Gift That Keeps On Giving — The Crud.

I couldn’t find the reference at the Centers for Disease Control’s Web site, but I’m pretty certain The Crud is the official name of this widespread malady.

And if it’s not, it should be.

I have been — as the old saying goes — sick as a dog.

What’s really depressing is this is the second round of the scratchy throat, itchy eyes, someone-is-standing-on-my-face sinus-pressure circus my household has been hit with since the weather took a chill pill in late September.

So I started wondering why we humans can be “hungry as a horse,” but “sick as a dog.”

Doesn’t quite make sense, although I have seen some horses put away a sizable amount of chow. Then again, I’ve seen some dogs eat their weight in food if the supply were unlimited — like the hounds who kidnapped the steaks, hot dogs, burgers and corn laid out on a tempting table near a friend’s backyard grill.

That was one BBQ gone bust — “PBJ anyone?”

The wonderful worldwide Web can be its own smorgasbord of goodies when searching the origin of words and phrases — or anything, for that matter.

I plug in “sick as a dog” into my favorite search site — coincidentally known by geeks far and wide as “dogpile.com” — and a seemingly endless ocean of data emerges.

Since I don’t have the time to wade through the 8 bazillion hits, I go for the obvious by clicking askville by amazon.

That site credits worddetective.com with this entry: “‘Sick as a dog,’ which means ‘extremely sick’ and dates back to at least the 17th century, is also not so much negative as it is simply descriptive. Anyone who knows dogs knows that while they can and often will eat absolutely anything, on those occasions when their diet disagrees with them the results can be quite dramatic.”

I had a dog like that. Sounded like he was turning himself inside out when he got a bad apple now and again.

My head — feeling like it’s stuffed with toxic cotton candy — reels as I contemplate the origins of all those other phrases that reference dogs.

I search those origins and have to agree with the bloggers out there: Dogs have gotten the short end of the stick for a long time. Plenty of negative images are associated with the terms: “Dog tired,” “dog day afternoon,” “three dog night,” “dogs of war,” and others.

I think we humans make up for these years of slams by lavishing comfortable lives onto our dogs, at least the one’s in loving homes.

I’ve always said, dogs have it made. Their only real job is to be devoted to their master, eat, sleep and go to the bathroom — maybe catch a stick or an errant gopher — but that’s about it.

But sometimes we go too far. I got an ad in the mail for “High-End Dog Jewelry” from CuddlyRuff.com. “Doesn’t Your Pet Deserve Celebrity Treatment?” the flier asked.

Pictured were dogs wearing sterling silver heart necklaces, some bedazzled with real gems.

For a mere $1,195 your mutt can charm the neighborhood with a diamond heart tag. If your dogs prefers a faint splash of pink, a pearl dog necklace can be had for $1,130.

We live in a country where we can’t feed all of our children, and the homeless roam streets from sea to shining sea, and yet we have dogs wearing diamond necklaces.

What’s wrong with this picture? It ought to make you sick.

That is all.

— Managing Editor John Charles Robbins can be reached at 272-6122 or jcr800@gmail.com.