For help, we turned to one of my favorite websites, The Word Detective. The Word Detective – a newspaper column and website -- answers readers’ questions about words and language. It’s written by Evan Morris – who lives with two dogs. After researching the origin of “dog-eat-dog,” he wrote that the original saying was “Dog does not eat dog.”

“Back in 43 B.C., Roman man of letters Marcus Tarentius Varro noted that ‘Canis caninam non est’ (‘Dog does not eat dog’), meaning that even a (supposedly) lowly creature like the dog has limits, if not principles, and will not destroy its own kind.

“…But history tends to indicate that humans are not so principled as dogs. By the 16th century, folks were imagining a world in which metaphorical dogs did devour each other, and ‘dog eat dog,’ had come to mean ‘ruthlessly competitive.’ Not surprisingly, by the time of the Industrial Revolution, phrases such as "It's a dog eat dog world" had become common …”

Thank you, Evan. What makes that phrase all the more disconcerting in my view – and I’ve viewed a lot of humans and dogs – is that I think the former should be striving to be more like the latter, rather than making dogs more like humans, which is what we, as one species, have been doing to the other.

Dogs don’t start wars, conditionally love, foreclose on mortgages, or discriminate. I’m not saying we should elect a dog to the White House. (Though, other than soiling the Oval Office carpet, a dog would probably do less damage in the office than its current holder.)

A lot of us understand and relate to dogs better than we do humans – a slightly more complex and unpredictable species. And it occurs to me that maybe we can use that understanding to help us make our presidential choice – to look at those running not as candidates, but caninedidates.

So in the days ahead we will be presenting our “Dog Lovers' Guide to the Presidential Election,” where we will ask – and answer – the question, “If the candidates were dogs, what breed would they be?”

With dogs, how they act – from how big they get to how much they’ll drool, bark, eat and shed – can often be predicted by their particular breed. We can’t predict the behavior of our elected officials that way, but – just maybe – by assigning them dog breeds, we might get some clues. And even if we don’t, it will be kind of fun.

This week on Mutts we’ll be telling you which dog breed each presidential candidate most resembles – in looks and behavior. For example, if Hillary Clinton were a dog she’d be a … sorry, you’ll just have to wait.

Otherwise somebody will steal my idea. You can’t be too careful. After all, it’s a blog eat blog world out there.