idiom.
A person who has reached their goal but doesn't know what to do next.
Example Citation:
He entered office in a state of sublime ignorance — "the dog that caught the car knew a lot more about what to do with the car than I knew about what to do with the governor's office" — but he learned fast and had two rather successful terms.
— Jonathon Yardley, "A memoir of Dale Bumpers, a country boy who made good in politics and moved to the big city to stay," The Washington Post, February 16, 2003
Earliest Citation:
In rare cases, the raider, who has been interested only in making a profit all along, will take over the company. That's usually a case of the dog that caught the car. What does he do now?
— Alan Gersten, "Greenmailer Eying HNG/InterNorth?," Omaha World-Herald, November 24, 1985
Notes:
This idiom is based on the strange habit that some dogs have of chasing cars that are passing by on a nearby road. What on earth would one of these crazed canines do if it actually caught a car? This idiom is also seen as the dog that caught the truck (1993) and the dog that caught the bus (1994).
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New words. 2013.