Citations:one man and his dog

idiomatic

 * 1984, Nursing Times:
 * People around here tell me that they can remember the days when the hospital was run by just one man and his dog. Then people knew everyone by name and it was quite common to find a boss who knew details of his staff's domestic lives. Things have certainly changed today. The man and his dog have been replaced by a regular hunting party and a bloody pack of hounds. There is now great activity all the time with everyone scurrying around writing memos to each other ...
 * 2010, UK House of Lords. Science and Technology Committee, Nanotechnologies and Food: Evidence (ISBN 9780108459238), page 283:
 * We have stressed that this is the kind of work which not just one man and his dog could carry out, it needed input from various different specialisms, [sic] and we were looking particularly for collaborative approaches which would allow the measurement and toxicology and so on all to be dealt with as part of a larger consortium. We are in the process of evaluating research proposals at the moment and we should be able to make a decision in the next couple of months [...]
 * 2010, Simon Down, Enterprise, Entrepreneurship and Small Business (SAGE Publications, ISBN 9781412910125), page 200
 * They never seem to go anywhere: they are all 'executive director' of this and 'chairman' of that, when it's just one man and his dog. It makes me laugh. Here we are employing people, growing, and producing innovative stuff. We haven't got the time to get into that game. It's a lot of bullshit really. Looks like the government is helping the small firm, you know. We just keep our heads down and get on with it.
 * 2012, Paul Arthur, CADCAM: Training and Education through the ’80s: Proceedings of the CAD ED ’84 Conference (Springer Science & Business Media, ISBN 9789401171182), page 9:
 * [...] he could foresee a huge manufacturing complex operated by one man and his dog ...
 * 2013, J. E. Cooling, Software Design for Real-time Systems (Springer, ISBN 9781489929570), page 40:
 * It has had government contracts terminated. It has had one of its major projects investigated and evaluated by a rival software house (this being paid for by a highly disillusioned customer). And its software effort on one defence project was described as being run by ‘one man and his dog’.
 * 2014, Alex Woolf, The Typewriter: Stories of the Surreal, the Supernatural and the Downright Strange (Andrews UK Limited, ISBN 9781849898171):
 * 'My name is Evie, by the way. Evie Nickelbite.' 'Pleased to meet you. I'm Howard Protheroe.' Two minutes and fifty three seconds later, Howard opened his front door, and ushered Freddy and Evie into his house. 'How's the book going?' 'Pretty damn good, if you want the truth. I've introduced some totty.' 'A girl?' 'Too right! Well it seemed pretty dullsville[,] just one man and his dog. Thought I might spice things up a bit.' 'Well what's she like, this girl?'
 * 2015, Neil Collins, Red Mist: A Fan's View of the 2014/15 Season (ISBN 9781326353629), page 24:
 * Man City may have just forked out $100m to take a majority stake in MLS side New York City, but their support was swamped by a sea of red including Liverpool fans Daniel Craig and Mike Myers. Plus, Rodgers' pregame press conference was rammed, whilst Pellegrini's was attended by one man and his dog as tumbleweeds drifted by.
 * 2017, Chris Montgomery, Emma Moore, Language and a Sense of Place: Studies in Language and Region (Cambridge University Press, ISBN 9781108184069), page 312:
 * "Howay, man. What are they aboot? Arty-farty 20 garbage watched by one man and his dog [...]" In this mock letter howay appears together with other enregistered north-east forms, such as the vocative man (line 19, 'howay man' being a very common collocation), youse for second person plural (lines 7 and 13), possessive me (which is used here categorically and thus does not reflect real life use – see Snell 2010) and some features of pronunciation represented through nonstandard ...
 * 2017, Alan Charlesworth, Social Media Marketing: Marketing Panacea or the Emperor’s New Digital Clothes? (Business Expert Press, ISBN 9781631577659):
 * And not just blogs read only by one man and his dog.

possibly literal

 * , Danny Baty, The Haunting Story of One Eyed Jack (ISBN 0557569087):
 * Danny In 1910, before the Barkshed campground in Mountain View Arkansas was called Barkshed, it was a gold miner's paradise and only one man and his dog knew it! They lived there all alone and mined the crystal clear springs every day. He would take all the gold that he found and put it in mason jars and bury them beneath the white rocks up and down the creek which is also known now as Sylamore Creek.
 * 2017, James Herbert, 48 (ISBN 9781447294627), page 12:
 * In better times the ceremonial coach had used that archway, but now it was going to accommodate just one man and his dog. Cagney was already halfway across and I was catching up fast, when I spotted the Bedford OYD tucked away in the far corner of the square. The army truck hadn't been there the night before, nor the night before that, so I figured the Blackshirts had arrived in it earlier that morning – a military vehicle suited their martial games just fine.

literal

 * 2005, Thomas A. Metzger, A Cloud Across the Pacific: Essays on the Clash Between Chinese and Western Political Theories Today (Chinese University Press, ISBN 9789629961220), page 197:
 * His father told him of a scientific prediction that one day the sun's light and heat would die out and suggested that, on that very day, there would perhaps be left on earth just one man and his dog. The little boy was fascinated by this image.
 * 2010, Philippa Forrester, The River: A Love Story, a New Life in the Country, and One Idyllic Year With Otters, Random House (ISBN 9781407089089), page 29:
 * Heroic tales, adventurous days—just one man and his dog. Bill is not perfect; he has his faults. He is especially grumpy with children (we never let him close) and other male dogs, particularly now that he is getting old and stiff; he smells; he is frightened of loud aeroplanes and any kind of banging; he is slightly neurotic. Every summer if he feels he is not getting enough attention he comes down with a mystery illness.