The SCOOP on DOG POOP

Everybody’s got their vice. 

For some it’s fingers on a chalkboard, others dog poop.

I don’t mind me some dog poop.

Every time one of my dog poops, I’m reminded that I saved a life.

She used to defecate herself in a concrete cave of a life and wait for some Doggie Death Squad to show up and shovel it out.

So I don’t mind me some dog poop.

It reminds me of exactly what I have done to save another living thing’s precious gift called LIFE.

This dog who was literally lifted out of the depths of canine Hell now has a chance to poop under a nice shady tree, or a dewy meadow, or even on the random dandelion.

That doesn’t mean though, that I don’t pick up some dog poop.

I carry enough bags with me on my doggie walks to hit the grocery store on the way home.

Don’t overestimate me though.

Occasionally one of them gets the urge to plop a present on a lawn and I have either run out of bags or after working a 15 hour day forgot to bring one.

So a few times I may have been neglectful.

You, and many others, however, display a very different kind of neglect.

I see the dozens of plastic coffee cups thrown out windows onto our sidewalk.

I take caution around the glass a random drunk teenager decorated the driveway with and mind my business about your parking lot of a graveyard  that used to be a lawn.

In the winter, I ignor the exhaust you spew out of car all morning to melt the snow off.  

I use this new thing called a SNOW SCRAPER. 

I try to ignor your Christmas lights up twenty-four hours a day, too. 

Although it is nice knowing that we both celebrate the birth of Christ though.

You like to use him name a lot at me and in ways I’ve never heard before.

What was that you said that one night my Sylvia pooped a few feet in your yard and I had run out of bags, was it  “Christ, what kind of asshole person are you to let your dog shit all over my lawn and run off, Jesus Christ!” 

To think, we hadn’t even met before.    

How DID you KNOW I was actually Jesus Christ?

And my pup Sylvia was walking proud when you hissed at us that night.

Her poop was about the size of a small potato.

You really thought it was something though.

She thought her Alabaman ass won some sort of blue ribbon that night.

And me running off like that.  “Running” all the way down the road, into another neighborhood, all the way back, then past your house again, with three dogs in tote.  

If you call that running I must be more agile than I think.   When you finally found me in your truck that night,  I was actually standing across from your yard letting my pup Max pee on a stick in the woods.    

I must have needed a break from all that “running.” 

You must need a break from running around too.  You and your gal pal are living in your parents’ house. 

 

Car’s home all day and all night. 

I was glad that I gave you two something to do that day.    I had worked about oh, 12 hours that day and still managed to take my dogs for that walk even in the pouring rain and once the shit hit the fan, you signed right up.    

Must have been the highlight of your day.  

I like to help out when I can.

I’m glad, too that my paycheck deducts some of my pay to help you out while you stay unemployed.

24 year old veterans should definitely stay home and guard their yards.     

We have to take Homeland Security very seriously.

 

My dad was a veteran too.  One of those purple heart veterans that took a few bullets in the back before he returned home.   He had to find a job though almost immediately after the stitches came out and he worked at that job for about 45 years.

And when you said, what was that, “I served my country and don’t deserve to get shit on” that was impressive, too.

Especially for the eight months I estimate you served.

My dad served his country in Vietnam.

But his definition of serving his country didn’t include stalking women in their pickup trucks in the dead of night and threatening them.

Did you actually threaten that you were going to buy your own dog and come over and have him shit in my yard?

Please do.

That dog can poop all he want in my yard.  My grass is greener than the entire neighborhood. 
 
When you introduced yourself with the words, "hey you gonna' clean up the shit you left in my yard?"  I was apologetic.  I even told you I had run out of bags and that I'd come back when I dropped the dogs off to scoop the poop.  

You rambled on.  

I still came back to clean up our dog poop.

And yet our dog poop is still not equivalent to the kind of SHIT that comes out of your mouth when you throw a temper tantrum over it. 

I really don’t get excited over it like you do. 

You don’t look at it like poop on the ghost of a lawn that used to be there before you moved in.

You look at it like I did it personally.

You actually think I am pooping on you.    

Like I shit on YOU.

That’s right.  That’s what I do, you see.

It’s my scam.

I train my broken-down, tossed-out-in-the-trash, damaged dogs to squat and run.   Right there in your yard.  I only have two jobs so I have plenty of time to show them how to do it. 

It’s not because dogs got to go when they got to go, it’s because some day I hope to bring this circus act of designated dog pooping on the road.

Sylvia already has a few excellent references.

And I’ll ignor your temper tantrum even though you have an outdoor cat.

The same outdoor cat that roams about my yard killing all the cute chipmunks and bluebirds that feed at the birdfeeder I love to watch from my kitchen window.

That’s exactly why I put all the feeders out there. 

To  entertain your cat.

And I’ll also ignor that your outdoor cat uses the entire neighborhood as its litter box. Pooping and pissing all over the place.   

The scoop on dog poop is that people have become more self-centered and possessive than ever before. 

Their PROPERTY is more important than HUMANITY.

They’d rather take a knife to a neighbor, a baseball bat, stalk them in their pickup trucks late at night in the pouring rain than work out a solution in a neighborly way.

We have lost touch with what's most important, people.

And it's NOT poop.

Even though POOP is HOW the earth goes round.

That’s why the farmers fill up their tractor trucks with poop and plow it all over their fields to fertilize next year’s crop.  Earthworms eat most of the poop we create and poop that out to rejuvenate the soil.   

Gosh, in the 1870s, it was POOP that warmed the pioneers as they settled out west.

That was thanks to the almighty buffalo and his ginormous, flame-igniting poop.

Poop is how the earth goes round.  

You can all keep your PARKING LAWN and other neighbors can keep their precious museum of a yard that they NEVER play in and plant all the pretty flowers in your garden with all the fake poop you plant them in and watch out your windows on POOP DUTY just to catch the next squat and run.

It won’t be me. 

Because I remember what’s important about this life.

And it's not poop. 

It's actually junior mints.

New Hampshire Man Seeks Tranportation Gets Solicited for Prostitution; Wife Seeks Refuge in Walgreens

When we first announced we were planning our trip to the BIG APPLE, it was far from heartwarming.

"You are going to get mugged.  Or robbed," my mom warned as she instructed us that we would have to wear socks so we could stick our ATM card in it.

And the ever-anxious mother-in-law described in detail her dream about the four of us walking the streets of NYC falling victim to a gangster drive-by shooting.

Despite the drama, we packed up and two days into our trip we were across from the Port Authority Bus Terminal between Thursday night's finest thugs and a curb of Broadway's Late Night Ladies including Miss Shaniqua in her pink velour leotard and four inch stilts.

It was 11 or so PM after our visit to Times Square and it was time for the Husband to alert our transportation.   So with me and our two doe-eyed daughters in tote, said Husband rests at a corner and dials UBER.  I've been married to Said Husband for a few decades so I have mastered the 'reading of the lips technique' and mid-sentence I translated "WE NEED RIDE to HOTEL" to "GET US THE HELL OUT OF HERE STAT."

He was sweating something Philly-cheesesteak-like which could have been due to the threat of impending mugging, robbing, or drive-by shooting our mothers had threatened us about OR due to the 93 degree temperature reading even at the stroke of midnight. 

When I saw his hands begin his directional ballet, I squeezed my daughters' hands and assured them it would not be long.

UNTIL DADDY would be offered some WEED.

Well, first it WAS weed.

Then it was "the goods."

And finally, any girl he wanted.

Yep.  That's as good as it gets in Times Square if you don't leave before the clock strikes midnight.

So you watch from a few steps away, your groom of 18 years, making friends with a New York City PIMP.

It was very different than how you planned your marriage.  You anticipated a house and a few kids and probably even a trip to the BIG APPLE.

But you never imagined that man who promised you better or for worse to be offered any chick on a city curb or worse yet, Shaniqua who forgot to wear her tutu apparently.  Or a bra.  Or at least eyebrows.

About the moment the City Slicking Salesman announced "this is my block, Man" and "I can get you whatever girls you want, Man" and immediately after he placed his arm around my groom's shoulders, I became very jealous.

Of the people who were safely inside a Walgreen's pharmacy.

I didn't care if the father of my children canceled UBER and ordered Shaniqua instead.  I WAS GETTING MY DAUGHTERS OFF the STREET and into Aisle 11 pronto.

Which conveniently had very nice air conditioning.

So after all the killing and dying-on-the-streets cautions our mothers insisted on, our trip to the BIG APPLE would end like this.

My husband, a small town cheese-loving, backyard-living boy, walking arm-in-arm with Tito, Times Square Fast Talking Pimp and me distracting my daughters with Walgreen's Weekly Specials.

And damn-it-all, I was wearing flip-flops so I didn't even have my ATM card!