Pissfingers

About

Pissfingers is an online slang term for an old dog with highly specific medical needs or, more infrequently, dogs that are particularly difficult to care for, such as those having past traumatic experiences or bad behavior. The name was inspired by a tweet in which Twitter user @nialltg joked that while dog shelters support adopting dogs from shelters rather than purchasing puppies from breeders, shelters will also encourage adopting a difficult-to-care-for elderly dog, which the tweet joked was named "Pissfingers." The term then became a way to joke about elderly dogs in some online dog lover communities.

Origin

On March 25th, 2021, Twitter user @nialltg^[1] posted, "dog shelters: don’t buy puppies, consider adoption instead. also dog shelters: this is pissfingers. she’s 19 years old and can’t live in a home with children, books or electricity. pissfingers is nervous around hair and needs 400 acres of land and an orchard of extinct fruits." The tweet gained over 2,600 retweets and 23,000 likes in over one year (shown below).

Spread

Over the following year, the tweet spread in reposts on Reddit in communities such as /r/brandnewsentence^[2] and /r/oddlyspecific.^[3] From there, the term became a common reference for people describing difficult dogs. For example, an April 2021 viral tweet about a difficult chihuahua named Prancer^[4] inspired several people to recall the Pissfingers tweet.^[5] A March 2022 tweet by @calebsaysthings^[6] joking about the euphemisms shelters use to describe difficult dogs also drew comparisons to Pissfingers.^[7]

On Facebook, some animal adoption groups have referenced "Pissfingers" to discuss the difficulty levels of some potential pets. For example, on April 6th, 2021, Shadow Cats TNR^[8] posted that a cat they had in their possession was not a "Pissfingers" (shown below, left). On May 14th, 2022, the subreddit /r/BanPitBulls^[9] reposted a Facebook post showing a Pit Bull the post had dubbed "Pissfingers," gaining over 1,000 points (shown below, right).

Search Interest

External References