In the first episode of The Simpsons (in 1989!), Homer, down on his luck, goes to the dog track and puts everything he has on a longshot named Santa's Little Helper. The pup loses badly, but Homer and Bart end up taking him home when his owner sets him free. Homer isn't the only one who bets on losing dogs. Mitski does too, but in a metaphorical sense, as she describes in this song. These losers can often be lovable, hard to resist when they look at you with those puppy dog eyes. Like many Mitski tracks, it's open to interpretation but pretty intense.

"I Bet On Losing Dogs" has endured as one of Mitski's most popular songs, often played at her concerts and one of her top streamers. She released it in 2016 on her album Puberty 2 back when she was still on the fringe of the indie rock scene. Two years later, she got a gig opening for Lorde and released her highly acclaimed album Be The Cowboy, which attracted waves of new fans. Mitski quickly learned that she has a low threshold for fame. This level of attention stressed her out to the point that she went on hiatus in 2019 and stayed there throughout the pandemic. She started releasing music again in 2021 and was better prepared for the demands and scrutiny when she put out her next album, Laurel Hell, in 2022. Her star kept rising but she found ways to stay grounded, like avoiding social media.

This is one of several Mitski songs that TikTok users adapted around 2022, making her very popular on the platform even though she doesn't use it. Most videos use the opening line, "my baby, you're my baby."