Screwing the pooch

So, this year, I've been using the term "screw the pooch" quite often (a phrase you generally don't want to hear/use in a research lab. Hopefully, it won't appear to often when I'm a doctor). Wiktionary provides an interesting history of the term:

The term was first documented in the early "Mercury" days of the US space program. It came there from a Yale graduate named John Rawlings who helped design the astronauts' space suits. The phrase is actually a bastardisation of an earlier, more vulgar and direct term which was slang for doing something very much the wrong way, as in "you are f*cking the dog!" At Yale a friend of Rawlings', the radio DJ Jack May (a.k.a. "Candied Yam Jackson") amended this term to "screwing the pooch" which was simultaneously less vulgar and more pleasing to the ear.

I have a great image of someone walking into a dark room,looking forward to anevening of marital bless, and making a fatal error with Fluffy.