Aside from an IRS audit, stepping into a pile of dog poop on a public sidewalk is the next most hated thing in America. It stinks. It’s messy. It’s disgusting. It gets into the tread of your shoe and now you find yourself trying to get it out by dragging your shoe back-and-forth across someone’s front lawn, looking like a loon in the process, and often exacerbating the problem by driving the poop deeper into the tread. Sometimes this method works, sometimes it doesn’t. Other times, you need to find a stick and try to scrape out the poop from the grooves which is really gross. The last resort is getting back home and using a high-pressure hose nozzle to clean it off which is always effective but now your shoe has to dry out for a day or two. I have much better things to do with my limited time on this planet than cleaning up what was obviously someone else’s mess. What kind of dog owner is it that doesn’t pick up after their dog? The completely arrogant, irresponsible, selfish, and indifferent dog owner, that’s who. These people must be stopped! I declare a War on Dog Poop!

These are the type of people that the “Please Clean up After Your Dog” yard signs were invented for. Signs like this would not be necessary if all dog owners exercised some common decency, for example, picking up their dogs excrement. I’m also pretty sure this group of dog owners are the reason for the proliferation of the “free” dog poop bag dispensers found in public spaces and generally maintained by some city or county governmental department, like Parks and Recreation. Any government entity that tells you something is free is totally lying to you because any good or service provided by the government uses taxpayer dollars to pay for it, ergo, it is not actually free. This also means two other things: 1) Taxpayers paid 10¢ for a 1¢ plastic baggie, 2) Taxpayers are subsidizing people’s lack of proper dog poop clean-up etiquette. There’s probably a free online course about this too, so there’s absolutely no excuse for people not to clean up after their dog. As far as I’m concerned, ignorance cannot be claimed and the lack of picking up after one’s dog is a blatant act of disrespect for the neighborhood.

The not actually free government provided dog poop baggie issue aside, without much effort or expense, dog poop baggies can be purchased almost anywhere. They are in the pet aisle in the supermarket, often at convenience stores, and all over the Internet. Some of them even come with a handy dispenser that can be clipped onto a leash or a collar. They come in various gender specific colors too if that’s your jam. I think the black ones represent non-binary dogs but since dogs are color blind it doesn’t really matter to them. One can even subscribe to have them delivered on a regular basis which is very convenient for busy urbanites. If bought in bulk, they are less than a penny each. So, I think I can rule out inconvenience or budgetary constraints as reasons for not carrying dog poop baggies and picking up after your dog. It must be something else…

Oddly, some of you DO go to the trouble of picking up your doggos doodoo…and then for whatever idiotic reason you drop the poop baggie to the side and keep moving. You see these everywhere; the little green, blue, pink, or black plastic baggies of dog poop sitting on the sidewalk, or in a driveway, or tossed onto someone else’s front lawn. I just don’t get this half-assed attempt to clean up after your dog. Why can’t you just take the poop bag with you and toss it into the trash when you get home? Oh, maybe it’s the smell that bothers you? Let me tell you something; nobody actually likes the smell of dog poop either except for other dogs and perhaps some super-freaky people, but it comes with owning a dog. You want a dog? Get used to bad breath, smelly poop. and stinky dog farts. If you can’t handle any of that then get a goldfish.

Thinking about this further, I can only imagine the dog poop getting onto the sidewalk or on your front lawn in one of the following ways:

1. Someone’s dog got loose and relieved itself when the moment came as it was running through the neighborhood. This is free-range poop and there’s not much to be done about it.

2. Somebody simply left their doggie poop bags at home and didn’t bother to come back to pick up after their dog. These are generally well meaning, but obviously lazy, inconsiderate dog owners.

3. Someone was physically unable to bend down to clean up after their dog. I’ll give disabled persons and the old folks a pass on this, but maybe they should try curbing their dog.

4. Somebody just doesn’t care where their dog poops and cares even less about cleaning it up. These dog owners are Public Enemy #1.

There was a #4 in my old neighborhood in Granada Hills who let his dog poop on my front lawn on a regular basis and left me to clean up the mess. He reminded me of an older, graying version of Mr. Rooney from Ferris Buehler’s Day Off, mustache and all. It took me a while to figure out it was him and his ankle biter Pomeranian as he was very sneaky about it. Was it a sign that he didn’t like me? I don’t think so because we never met each other. Or, maybe he thought he was doing me a favor and fertilizing my lawn? Well, I don’t know what he was actually thinking, but one morning I was looking out of my front window sipping my coffee and I caught him and his dog in the act. He was nervously looking around as his dog was dropping a deuce on my lawn. I stormed out of the front door and confronted him about it. There was no use denying it. I said, “I really don’t like cleaning up your dog’s poop; why don’t you pick up after your dog?” He sarcastically quipped, “Or what; are you going to hurt me?” like some schoolyard taunt from a ten-year-old masochist. And then he just casually walked away, leaving the fresh, steaming pile of dog poop on my front lawn. This blatant act of defiance enraged me.

I ran to the backyard through the side gate, grabbed the pooper scooper I used for my dog, quickly scooped up some Labrador poop from the backyard, ran back to the front yard, scooped up the fresh pom poop (indeed, I was going to pay Rooney back in spades) then ran to the corner in the direction that I last saw him walking and looked up and down the street, and there he was, strolling south down the sidewalk like nothing had happened. He was maybe two houses ahead of me. I briskly but quietly walked up behind him, and when I got about ten feet away from him, I said (sarcastically, of course), “Excuse me sir, I think you forgot something!” He stopped dead in his tracks and spun around on his heels to see me standing there with the loaded pooper scooper. His eyes widened and his jaw dropped a little. Without saying a word, he spun back around on his heels and began walking away from me at a fairly brisk pace, looking over his shoulder every now and then to see if I was still following him. Then I said to him, “I’ll just follow you home and leave this on your lawn!” He picked up the pace a little bit more and yelled over his shoulder, “I’M CALLING THE POLICE!” which made me chuckle a little bit thinking about how that interaction with the cops might transpire…

…to be continued next week.

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