from Maine Lingo: Boiled Owls, Billdads, & Wazzats by John Gould
COLD AS A DOG AND THE WIND NORTHEAST: A most excellent term to show the magic and charm with which Mainers adorn their speech, and the title of a book by Ruth Moore. There is nothing in God’s great world so cold as a short-haired dog faithfully sitting with his tail on the ice as he gazes after his beloved master, who has told him to stay. Stay he does, shivering until his master is out of sight, and still shivering he sits there quite a time in hopeful presumption his owner may turn back — or perhaps change his mind and take him along. To describe anything as being cold as that dog is a pinnacle of vivid speech and poetic beauty. But even this lily may be artfully gilded! The northeast wind in Maine’s narsty blow; the one that brings the blizzards and the ripping rainstorms that peel shingles from the barn. That dog, now, is really cold.