I’ve always loved the phrase a “dog-eared page”.

dog-eared page

The OED defines it as “ having worn or battered corners” but we almost always use it to describe turning down the corner of a book page.

My own dog, Baffi, has the same ears, gently folded over like a corner of a page (or as a stranger remarked in the Metro one day, she has ears like artichoke leaves).

dog-eared

artichoke-leaved

Baffi was a young dog when we lived in Paris. If the mail came when I wasn’t at home, it would be pushed under my front door, to be greeted by my bored little dog who, if it had some bulk, would nibble at its corners.

One such time, I opened the nibbled package and, to my delight, found that Baffi had gone through the packaging and made it to the book itself!

Robbe-Grillet’s Les Gommes

Of course, being 12 years old now, Baffi has matured into a non-book eating dog (she now conserves her energy for merciless killings of chipmunks in the garden), but whenever I look at the chewed corners, I think of how Baffi lead me back to the original “battered” meaning of “dog-eared pages”….