My great grandfather was born in 1890 - he went to fight in world war 1 in june 1918 - while there he talked about how the men were out of there minds horny for French women, however , these women were not particularly fond of Americans - he said that due to the lack of available women, men were looking for anything they could find, and there was an abundance of French poodles - as the men satisfied their needs with these available animals the term "screwed the pooch" was born.