In raindance writers' lab: write + sell the hot screenplay, which is a pretty good book about how to write and sell the hot screenplay (exactly what it says on the tin), Elliot Grove says:

Reservoir Dogs had a very different meaning for us farmboys growing up in America. You city slickers, or Europeans, probably thought that this title was a cutesy arty title. And it is. But to me it had a different meaning which summed up the movie in two words.

As a kid we were told never to go into a dry reservoir. They did a lot of open quarry mining for gravel near where I grew up. There were two types of quarries - some quarries would hit a spring and fill up with water. We used to dive off the sides of these in the summer. Other quarries were dry quarries. There would just be a puddle in the bottom after a rain shower. Dogs and rats would fall down into the quarry, and be unable to get up. The only way they could survive was by eating each other. And every summer there would be a sad story about some kid who went down into a dry quarry and was ripped to shreds. Knowing that now, isn't that the story of Reservoir Dogs?

B-)