Many people try their best and put in a lot of effort at work or school. This week, we’re talking about expressions that mean to work hard. You can work like a dog, work your butt off, or put your nose to the grindstone. As usual, we give you lots of examples and teach you about how you can use these expressions.

　　Maura:  To work like a dog means to work very hard.
　　Harp:  Yes. So if you use the expression to work like a dog, that means that someone is working very hard, putting in a lot of effort.
　　Maura:  Whenever we have an idiom with an animal, I always wonder, “Why that animal?”
　　Harp:  And Maura, why a dog?
　　Maura:  Well, dogs do work hard. And I’m not talking about the dogs that most people have for pets, but dogs that work, like a seeing-eye dog that helps people who are visually impaired or the dogs that pull sleds, they work pretty hard too.
　　Harp:  Yeah, and police dogs work really hard too.
　　Maura:  Right. So a dog that works, works almost all the time.