Stepping in It

There is only one thing worse than stepping in dog shit.  Stepping in dog shit and not realizing it until you’ve smeared it all over your car carpet or on your living room rug.  If you’ve done this you know what I’m talking about.  Your nose twitches, and you wonder, hum what could that awful smell be?  Then you look down, and damn.

I thought I had a grasp on humanity.  But I don’t understand people. Why oh why can’t they pick up after their dogs?   How much time and energy does it take to carry a small blue/ brown/ green baggie, bend over for just a minute, scoop it up, and then toss it in the trash? 

One of my political heroes, Harvey Milk, famously proposed legislation when he first got elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, fining people for not picking up after their dogs.  In a television news clip, Harvey walks on a lawn carrying a “pooper scooper,” talking about getting his first law passed.  And then, being the consummate showman that he was, he takes a few steps backwards, into, yes, a pile of shit.

I want to make a citizens arrest almost on a daily basis.

On the cull de sac where I live, there are some people who let their dogs roam free range like happy chickens, without giving a second thought to the fact that the dog is going to most likely poop right there on the street. When they gotta go, they go. 

A study in the journal “Frontiers in Zoology,” found that dogs use the planet’s magnetic field to choose the direction in which they poop.  It’s always on a north-south axis, never east to west.  The scientists don’t understand why.

“It is still enigmatic why the dogs do align at all, whether they do it “consciously” (i.e., whether the magnetic field is sensorial perceived (the dogs “see”, “hear” or “smell” the compass direction or perceive it as a haptic stimulus) or whether its reception is controlled on the vegetative level (they “feel better/more comfortable or worse/less comfortable” in a certain direction).”

My frustration, however, is not misaligned. I do not feel better, as I try to dig poop out of the intricate ridges on the bottoms of my favorite running shoes.  I am never without a baggie. They line my jacket pockets.  When I walk my beloved Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Picasso, on the street, I end up picking up other dog’s shit, because well, I just can’t stand it.

Online there is a company called Poop911.com that provides dog poop scooping services in San Francisco and the East Bay for just $9.95 a week.  They haven’t expanded to Marin yet.  I mean really?  People have to hire someone to pick up their dog’s poop? Are you shitting me?