pick a bone with

If you feel a need to blame anyone, it’s most constructive to pick a bone with yourself.

“It would have been just as well to let a sleeping dog lie undisturbed,” advised Albert Goldberg, who never hesitated to pick a bone with L.A.’s most famous arts luminary of the time.

One wavelet of Internet tributes paid to Mr. Bowie after his death on Sunday recalled a trip he took to a hotel room, in 1983, to pick a bone with MTV.

Cheer thee up, old friend, cheer thee up, and pick a bone with us; here, wash the cobwebs from thy throat by a hearty draught from this flask.

The dogs at Smith eat raspberries, climb trees for a succulent moss, and when times are really hard become burglars, burgling bacon in the night season, and even being ghoulish enough to visit Indian cemeteries to pick a bone with the dead.