Who Let the Dogs Out?
Turns out, it's not an easy question to answer
Hello!
Recently, I did a deep dive on the history of women’s suffrage in the United States for this newsletter.
It started with reading a few articles I found online, then I listened to a few podcast interviews, then I read a 500-page tome on the subject.
Before I knew it, I was connecting with Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner and working with librarians in the US to track down documents that were more than 100 years old.
I was riveted!
But when I finished writing my Curious Minds issue about Matilda Joslyn Gage, the suffragist history erased, I wanted to research and write something different.
Really different.
Enter: Who Let The Dogs Out.
I came across something that said the song Who Let The Dogs Out was a feminist anthem.
And instantly, I was curious…
Like a lot of stories I research, this one took me somewhere unexpected.
Really unexpected.
The version of Who Let The Dogs Out that most of us are familiar with was released by the Baha Men in 2000.
But that is not where the story of Who Let The Dogs Out begins…
So, sit back and get ready — because we’re about to go on a wild ride!
We’ll start in 1998, when a singer from Trinidad named Anslem Douglas wrote a song called Doggie.
The song includes the line “Who Let the Dogs Out?”
Douglas’s song was a feminist anthem, one that called out the men who were bothering the women on the dance floor.
“It’s a man-bashing song,” Douglas said in a 2016 interview.
“I’ll tell you why. The lyric of the song says, ‘The party was nice, the party was pumpin’.
“When I said the word ‘party’ I was being metaphorical. It really means things were going great.
“The men started the name-calling and then the girls respond to the call. And then a woman shouts out, ‘Who let the dogs out?’ And we start calling men dogs. It was really a man-bashing song.”
Douglas’s song mixed the sounds of the Caribbean with its calypso and junkanoo music.
It had a great dance beat and was played as part of the Carnival celebrations in Trinidad and Tobago in 1998.
That’s where a British hairdresser named Keith Wainwright heard it.
Wainwright loved music, and would play the mixtapes he brought back from the Caribbean in his London hair salon, Smile.
It was in his salon that a producer named Jonathan King heard Douglas’s song Doggie.
He thought the song could be a bigger hit, so recorded his own version and released it under the name “Fatt Jakk and his Pack of Pets.”
King’s version was not a hit – but it caught the attention of producer Steve Greenberg.
Greenberg could smell a hit.1
“The track was cheesy,” Greenberg said, “but the song had a really amazing hook.”
Greenberg reached out to the Baha Men, suggesting they record a version of it.
But instead of jumping at the chance to record the song, the Baha Men had to be convinced.
“The song’s already been a hit,” they told Greenberg.
“No one outside the Caribbean knows this song,” he responded.
“It could be a really big hit all over the world.”
And Greenberg was right.
The Baha Men’s version of Who Let the Dogs Out climbed up the charts, becoming a hit around the world – from the US to the UK and across Europe and all the way to Australia and New Zealand.
It also became a popular staple at sporting events, like Seattle Mariners games, who embraced the song as a team anthem during their 2000 season.
But as the song became more popular, the ownership of it suddenly came into question.
And, as artist Ben Sisto would discover, there was much more to the story.
Sisto first became interested in the history of Who Let The Dogs Out when he noticed the song’s Wikipedia page credited the hit to a British hairdresser named “Keith” (no last name) and with no citation.
While it initially appeared that Who Let the Dogs Out began with Douglas, Sisto discovered the history of the song was much more complicated.
“I never told anyone ‘Hey, I came up with the phrase ‘Who Let the Dogs Out,’ said Douglas in the 2019 documentary Who Let The Dogs Out.
“Never did, ‘cause I didn’t.”
In fact, Douglas claimed the phrase “Who Let the Dogs Out” came from his brother-in-law, who was a DJ in Canada.
But where did he hear it?
Well, at that radio station, there was a jingle that used the line “who let the dogs out.”
That jingle was written in late 1995/early 1996 by two production assistants at the radio station, Patrick Stephenson and Leroy Williams.
Stephenson and Williams felt they had a claim to the song, and filed a lawsuit against Douglas.
While Douglas agreed that Stephenson and Williams came up with the hook, he then had another legal battle on his hands over writing credits with the arranger of his song.
That battle would go on for six years.2
“There’s a joke that copyright law is the right to be held up in court…until you’re bankrupt,” Sisto told me.
“Copyright law really only protects people if they have the resources to enforce it.”
But the story doesn’t end in Canada.
Though Stephenson and Williams believed the song began with them, Sisto discovered that another artist had been singing about letting the dogs out in 1994.
Gillette3 and the production duo 20 Fingers had released a song called You’re a Dog that included the hook “Who Let Them Dogs Loose?”
And just like Douglas’s version, it was a feminist anthem, singing about the men in the club who were behaving like dogs.
But that still wasn’t the end of the story.
In parallel, Sisto found that two young rappers from Florida wrote a song called Who Let the Dogs Out in November 1992.
The two men, Joe Gonzalez and Brett Hammock, wrote the lyrics on Little Caesar’s bread bags and had the floppy discs (with receipts from K-mart) that corroborated their story and timeline.
Although it is hard to establish who deserves the credit (and money) attached with the song’s success, Sisto had now determined that the origin of Who Let the Dogs Out could be traced back several years before Anslem Douglas’s song.
And after years of research, Sisto thought he’d solved the mystery.
“I thought, ‘I did it, it’s done. There can’t possibly be anything else here.’”
He began sharing what he’d discovered in talks — and his story was so interesting that he began getting press coverage.
That’s when a man named John Michael Davis from Dowagiac, Michigan got in touch.
He claimed that “Who let the dogs out?” was a chant used by the Dowagiac football team — even earlier than the 1992 song Gonzalez and Hammock had recorded.
By this point, Sisto’s research was the subject of a documentary film, and the team producing it, Hodgee Films, traveled to Michigan to investigate.
And they found that Davis’s story was corroborated by the locals in Dowagiac.
“I don’t know what other people are saying, but I know we were saying it in 1990,” said Dowagiac Union High School Football coach Bernard Thomas.
Sisto was even given copies of VHS tapes of Dowagiac’s football games – where he saw the football team chanting, “Who let the dogs out? Woof woof.”
Sisto had already traced the song’s history over an eight year period from the Baha Men and Steve Greenberg to Keith Wainwright and Jonathan King, to Anslem Douglas, to Patrick Stephenson and Leroy Williams, to Gillette and 20 Fingers, and Joe Gonzalez and Brett Hammock.
And now it was linked to a high school football team in Michigan in 1990.
But…that wasn’t the end of the story.
It turned out Dowagiac High School wasn’t the only school chanting “Who Let The Dogs Out.”
Sisto then found video footage showing the chant used at sporting events from Illinois, New Jersey, Kansas, Georgia and Ohio.
And then, he found a video of a school pep rally in Austin, Texas where the group chanted “Who Let the Dogs Out” …in 1986.
“That video had been online the entire time I had been doing the research, but it was a 30-minute recap of the school’s full year, and that clip [of the chant] was at minute 17,” Sisto told me.
“There’s no way I would have naturally found it, so I had to do all this research to get back to that one clip.
“When it came on, it was like I found the Ark of the Covenant.”
So, did Who Let the Dogs Out begin in Austin in 1986?
It’s hard to say definitively, but after more than seven years of investigations, Sisto was ready to close this case.
“After I found the clip from Austin, I remember thinking, ‘I’m done. If it goes back further than this, great, someone else can find out.’”
For several years, Sisto has used his research in talks, sharing lessons on intellectual property and copyright law in an entertaining and unexpected way.
He also created a “Who Let The Dogs Out” museum that showcased hundreds of CDs, albums, shirts, toys and promotional items related to his investigations into the song.
And then he was approached to share his story as a documentary.
The 2019 documentary Who Let the Dogs Out takes you through the twists and turns Sisto faced determining the authorship of Who Let the Dogs Out.
So, who actually let the dogs out?
While the answer may still be debatable, we can at least agree that Ben Sisto deserves credit for discovering who let Who Let The Dogs Out out.
One more thing…
I’m so grateful that Ben generously shared his time and experience with me as I was researching this story.
In addition to the documentary Who Let The Dogs Out, I recommend listening to Ben share his story in an episode of the 99 Percent Invisible podcast.
And for your listening pleasure…
Baha Men - Who Let the Dogs Out
Anslem Douglas - Doggie
20 Fingers featuring Gillette - You’re A Dog
It’s Commencement Speech Time!
This was my favorite quote from Jerry Seinfeld’s speech to the Duke University Class of 2024:
Great advice, Jerry.
And nice metaphor. You pass!
I’ve been reviewing a few other speeches for communication inspiration.
So far, nothing tops Mary Schmich’s advice from 1997.4
Have you watched any of the speeches? I’d love to hear what you’ve noticed!
What else is on my mind?
MORE Communication Wonders and Blunders - Need more proof how valuable communication skills are? Check out these 10 recent communication moments that stood out to me.
Say What?! — A Peloton instructor’s workout wasn’t the only thing that hit me in my core.
How Can I Help?
I’ll keep saying it: Communication matters.
If you want to improve your communication (and get all the good things that come with that), I’m your gal.
So many companies could reap massive rewards – from performance and culture to retention and engagement – by improving their communication.
So, if you know someone who could benefit from some help (as even the most seasoned leaders do), please get in touch and check out my website for more information.
You can also see my Top 10 list of what I can (and can’t) do for you here.
And if you see any communication examples (the good, the bad, and the ugly) that you think are worth analyzing or sharing, please send them my way!
Stay Curious!
-Beth
Greenberg knew a thing or two about earworms. He is credited with discovering the band Hanson and bringing the song Mmmbop to the world.
Another lawsuit involved a version of the song by Chuck Smooth from 1999, which featured a sample of Douglas’ voice.
You might know Gillette from her other classic, Short Dick Man.
This advice hits differently reading it as an adult. I first read Mary’s column when I was a college student. I agree with her advice even more now.
THIS WAS NECESSARY