Don't Let Good Manners Go to the Dogs

A wise man once said, “Anything worth doing is worth doing well”. I take this to mean that whatever you endeavor to achieve, you must give it 100% effort in order to attain success. This can apply to all walks of life: the relationships we share, the career path we choose, our participation in art, music, sports, volunteer work and just about everything else we do.

It also applies to disposing of your dog’s poop properly.

The other day, I was walking with a friend through our town’s newly developed athletic fields. This is a wonderful, quiet, and safe place to walk without fear of being clipped by passing vehicles or tripping over a thousand tiny liquor bottles tossed carelessly onto the side of the road. Previously, my only concern about walking at the new fields was the dogs bounding around off leash and the piles of doggie waste that owners often neglected to clean up. Thankfully, our town posted signs reminding dog owners that their animals need to be on a leash at all times and that the animal waste must be cleaned and removed.

Since the posting of these signs I’ve noticed less unleashed dogs in the park and less doggie doo on the paths. But the other day, while walking with my friend, I spied a bright blue plastic bag sitting on the grass at the edge of the parking lot. Three guesses as to what that bag contained (and the first two don’t count).

It amazes me that someone would take the time and effort to bag their animal’s waste, yet neglect to take that bag home with them to bring the cleanup and disposal process full circle. Yes, the plastic bag prevents some unlucky soul (or sole) from stepping in the stool, but it also prevents it from decomposing further and becoming one with the soil.

I can think of three possible scenarios as to how this came to pass. The first is that the owner’s animal had to relieve itself early on in the walk. Not wanting to carry a steaming bag of poo around for an hour, the dog owner left the bag near their car and then promptly forgot about it when the time came to leave. This occurred while walking with another friend and her dog earlier this month. She left the bag on the side of the path so that she wouldn’t have to carry it around with her for the rest of the walk. The difference?  She went back and got it when it was time to leave.

The second scenario: This person bagged the waste but didn’t want to soil his or her car with the smell of poop on the ride home. Given that the park has no trash barrels, did this person think someone else would be generous enough to pick up a strange animal’s droppings and dispose of them at their own home? Talk about depending on the kindness of strangers!

The third scenario: This person thought that bagging up their animal’s waste fulfilled their responsibility; end of story. Home from my walk, I posted a photo of the offending blue bag on Facebook, accompanied by one of my classic snarky comments about whomever left the bag behind. Within minutes I had several posts from friends talking about finding similar blue bags in their neighborhoods as well.  So either this is a dog that really gets around, or we’ve got a town full of animal lovers who just don’t understand the concept of cleaning up after your dog.

I almost don’t blame them. Back when I had a dog, in the freewheeling 70’s, people didn’t clean up their animal’s poop. If your dog did its business on someone’s lawn, you avoided eye contact, yanked the leash and got the heck out of there. A man in our neighborhood posted a lawn sign that said, “Please curb your dog at home; I’m too old and tired to clean up the mess”. My friends and I thought this was ridiculous, to the point where we used to try to get our dogs to poop on his lawn on purpose. 35 years later, I’m a homeowner myself who knows that it’s no fun stepping in, sliding on or mowing over animal waste. I know it’s too little, too late but I send my apologies to my long-ago neighbor.

But I digress. Its 2012 which means you must clean up after your animal. No one really enjoys carrying around a plastic bag of dooky, or driving around with it in the car, or tossing it into the garbage can in their garage. But if you’re going to own a dog, this is more than just the law or the right thing to do.

It’s your duty.  (Sorry… couldn’t resist!)