Learn English – Connotation of dislike in ‘Credit where credit is due’

Wikipedia actually has an article dedicated to this phrase. It says:

The earliest confirmed publication is the 1866 Dion Boucicault play Flying Scud in which a character knowingly breezes past a difficult situation saying, "Excuse me Mr. Quail, I can't stop; I've got to see a man about a dog." In a listing for a 1939 revival on the NBC Radio program America's Lost Plays, Time magazine observed that the phrase is the play's "claim to fame".

Wiktionary adds:

• The most common variation is to "see a man about a horse".
• Almost any noun can be substituted as a way of giving the hearer a hint about one's purpose in departing.
• The inversion to "see a dog about a man" eliminates any lingering uncertainty about whether the hearer is being put off.
• A shorter variant is to "see a man".

As to the exact situation in which you would use this phrase, it suggests:

Used as an excuse for leaving without giving the real reason (especially if the reason is to go to the toilet, or to have a drink)

Back to Wikipedia again,

During Prohibition in the United States, the phrase was most commonly used in relation to the consumption or purchase of alcoholic beverages.

World Wide Words has additional info:

This has been a useful (and usefully vague) excuse for absenting oneself from company for about 150 years, though the real reason for slipping away has not always been the same. [...] From other references at the time [around 1866] there were three possibilities: 1) [the speaker] needed to visit the loo [...] 2) he was in urgent need of a restorative drink, presumed alcoholic; or 3) he had a similarly urgent need to visit his mistress.

Of these reasons [...] the second became the most common sense during the Prohibition period. Now that society’s conventions have shifted to the point where none of these reasons need cause much remark, the utility of the phrase is greatly diminished and it is most often used in a facetious sense, if at all.

The idiom "If and when X, (consequence)" has the meaning "if X happens, then when X happens, (consequence)". In other words, the "(consequence)" will not happen unless X happens, and will not happen before X happens.

It is generally used when talking about not making unnecessary preparations for an event that may not occur:

We'll come up with a zombie attack mitigation plan if and when we're attacked.

Some people might complain that "if and when" is redundant, because the "if" carries with it a sense of "when", in that you don't know whether X is going to happen until it actually does. But it's sometimes possible to know to some degree of certainty that something is going to happen, before it actually occurs - and in fact this is often the situation where the phrase is used:

We'll open fire on them if and when they open fire on us.

Simply saying "if they open fire on us" can invite the response "but we know they're going to, so we should fire now"; the when emphasises the speakers view that no pre-emptive action should be taken.

As to the difference between "if and when" and "when and if", the basic meaning is identical (as others have noted), but there is possibly a slight difference of nuance: the standard phrase is "if and when X", but inverting it to "when and if X" emphasises the if part, thereby putting more emphasis on the fact that it is uncertain whether X will actually occur.