Poem Explication: Weighing the Dog

Weighing the Dog commences abruptly, divulging immediately into a sentence without commas during the first two lines of the first stanza. The imagery in the first stanza also creates an image of unease and discomfort and awkwardness in lines such as "small bathroom" and "shaky blue scale". It is possible, also, that Billy Collins chooses the color blue for the scale because it is a commonplace and docile color, not fitting to the discomfort and oddness of the event occurring upon it.

The second stanza is the only one the does not begin with a capitalized word, leading it to serve as an explanatory thought for the first stanza. It is an excuse stanza, elaborating on why he is weighing the dog on a small scale. The author also conveys somewhat of a sense of the difficulty of training a dog to sit on a scale with his use of lengthy syntax, conveying the amount of time it could take.

The third stanza continues with the previous idea of perpetuating the awkwardness and arduousness of the situation and the poet writes out the process of subtraction in relatively expansive detail given to arbitrarity of the task: "with pencil and paper I subtract my weight from our total to find out the remainder that is his."

The third paragraph differs from the rest because there are no commas to break it up, like a run-on thought, only a period at the end. It is a confirmed statement, and this was it is made more pronounced and profound. The poet speaks the message of the poem here, saying that he never knew what his dog amounted to until he was subtracted from the equation.

The final stanza demonstrates the relationship that Collins has with his dog. It also has the same syntax as the previous stanza, preserving the aforementioned profundity, for Collins is saying that the he and his dog have remained important to one another through difficult times.