--- title: «The dog ate it»: excuses for homework — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: ««The dog ate it»: excuses for homework», a lesson of the everyday course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Max in Dublin had played FIFA all evening, so in the morning he told Mrs Kelly: «The dog ate it, miss, swear down.» The whole clas --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/426-the-dog-ate-it-excuses-for-homework/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Everyday](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/) / «The dog ate it»: excuses for homework # «The dog ate it»: excuses for homework Lesson 426 of the everyday course of Mova's primary school: 24 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/everyday/426-the-dog-ate-it-excuses-for-homework/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/426-the-dog-ate-it-excuses-for-homework/0/) — Max in Dublin had played FIFA all evening, so in the morning he told Mrs Kelly: «The dog ate it, miss, swear down.» The whole class roared — everyone knew Max's family has a goldfish and no dog. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/426-the-dog-ate-it-excuses-for-homework/1/) — «Grand,» said Mrs Kelly, «bring me the dog's note then.» He did the homework at lunch and a note still went home, now about the homework AND the lie. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/426-the-dog-ate-it-excuses-for-homework/2/) — Most homework excuses die the same way: they can be checked. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/426-the-dog-ate-it-excuses-for-homework/3/) — Priya in Leicester said the printer broke, and her teacher said «Lovely, email it tonight then» — there was nothing to email. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/426-the-dog-ate-it-excuses-for-homework/4/) — Leo in Boston blamed the WiFi, but the quiz website showed he had logged in at eight and played games for an hour. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/426-the-dog-ate-it-excuses-for-homework/5/) — «Your WiFi worked fine for the games, buddy.» - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/426-the-dog-ate-it-excuses-for-homework/9/) — Jayden in Houston even made fake proof: he poured juice on his sheet himself. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/426-the-dog-ate-it-excuses-for-homework/10/) — His teacher smoothed it out — the juice was only on the empty half — and raised one eyebrow. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/426-the-dog-ate-it-excuses-for-homework/11/) — Ruby in Glasgow said her wee (little) brother scribbled on it so she binned it; really she was stuck after one line. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/426-the-dog-ate-it-excuses-for-homework/12/) — Nobody checked, so she got away with it — and the next week the same sums came up in a test and she got a bad mark, because nobody had helped her. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/426-the-dog-ate-it-excuses-for-homework/13/) — Other stories fell apart too. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/426-the-dog-ate-it-excuses-for-homework/14/) — Kai in Manchester said «I left it at home, sir» on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday; on Thursday nobody believed it any more, and his teacher rang home. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/426-the-dog-ate-it-excuses-for-homework/15/) — Zara in Cape Town said load-shedding had stopped her, but her teacher checked the power-cut schedule: that evening the cut was in another part of town, not in her area. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/426-the-dog-ate-it-excuses-for-homework/16/) — Theo in Leeds said he had been «proper poorly» (really ill) with a headache, but a classmate had seen him playing football in the ginnel (a narrow alley between houses) that same evening. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/426-the-dog-ate-it-excuses-for-homework/18/) — The plain truth is nearly always the cheapest: «I didn't do it, I'll bring it tomorrow», or «I got stuck». - [19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/426-the-dog-ate-it-excuses-for-homework/19/) — A missing homework is a small problem; a lie in front of the class turns it into a big one. - [20](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/426-the-dog-ate-it-excuses-for-homework/20/) — «The dog ate my homework» is the oldest school excuse, so teachers hear it as a joke. - [22](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/426-the-dog-ate-it-excuses-for-homework/22/) — Online homework sites usually keep a record of when you logged in and what you did. - [24](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/426-the-dog-ate-it-excuses-for-homework/24/) — Making fake proof, like pouring juice on a sheet, turns a fib into a plan to fool someone, and teachers take it more seriously. - [25](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/426-the-dog-ate-it-excuses-for-homework/25/) — Saying «I left it at home» every day is a lie that shows itself, because the homework never comes. - [26](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/426-the-dog-ate-it-excuses-for-homework/26/) — Using a real problem that did not happen to you, like a power cut in another street, is still a lie. - [27](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/426-the-dog-ate-it-excuses-for-homework/27/) — Pretending to be ill makes it harder for people to believe you on a day you really are ill. - [28](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/426-the-dog-ate-it-excuses-for-homework/28/) — Saying «someone stole it» when nobody did makes innocent classmates look suspicious. - [30](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/426-the-dog-ate-it-excuses-for-homework/30/) — The punishment for an excuse is often bigger than for the missing homework: the lie gets its own consequence. - ← previous: [Family game night](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/425-family-game-night/) - next →: [«I did brush my teeth»: little lies at home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/427-i-did-brush-my-teeth-little-lies-at-home/) - ↑ back to [Everyday](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/)