go to the dogs

Definitions

1. 1

   To decline or deteriorate shockingly.

   • "[T]he merry old ways of good life have gone to the dogs—upon my carcase, they have!"
   • Poor devil, he's gone to the dogs altogether. He's got some twopenny-halfpenny job in the medical at Alexandria—sanitary officer or something like that. I'm told he lives with an ugly old Greek woman and has half a dozen scrofulous kids.

The neighborhood