keep a dog and bark yourself

keep a dog and bark (oneself)

To hire or pay someone who is ostensibly responsible for some amount of work, but then do or oversee most or all of that work oneself. Why are you paying a copy editor when you end up disregarding all of their changes anyway? Why keep a dog and bark yourself? Cleaning your bathroom when you have a cleaning service is like keeping a dog and barking yourself.
See also: and, bark, dog, keep
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

keep a dog and bark yourself

pay someone to work for you and then do the work yourself.
1991 Purchasing and Supply Management He does not solve the subcontractor's technical problems, keeping a dog and barking himself.
See also: and, bark, dog, keep
Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary
See also:
  • keep a dog and bark (oneself)
  • go shares
  • get in (someone's) good books
  • pile on the work
  • pile the work on
  • have truck with
  • be at work
  • be your own master/mistress
  • be (one's) own master
  • mistress
References in periodicals archive
Another manor house relic gives a whole new meaning to the saying of why keep a dog and bark yourself; the house had a treadmill operated by a dog in the manner of a hamster wheel.
Mitfords born to the manor
I thought that is what you kept a dog for, not to keep a dog and bark yourself.
Law is barking