A southpaw is what they used to call a left-handed pitcher in baseball and believe it or not, just like us humans where some of us are born right-handed and others left-handed, a dog can be either left pawed or right pawed. I always thought that was a funny way to describe a left-hander because when I hear "paw" I think of a dog, but baseball is a weird game anyway.
It has been well documented that some dogs will twirl when they get excited, especially the smaller ones like Yorkies or Pomeranian's. Which direction they twirl in, we suspect, has to do with the "handedness" of a dog. A right pawed dog would twirl in a clockwise direction and a left pawed dog would twirl in a counterclockwise spin. I got this bit of dog lore from Clay Thompson's column in the Arizona Republic although he does say he is only guessing when he responds to a reader with a question about twirling dogs. I think it's a reasonable explanation as to why some dogs twirl in a certain direction and others go the opposite way.
Of course once you think you have figured it out along comes a dog that spins in both directions, sort of ambigdogerous, which in baseball, means a switch hitter.
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