Darr told me early this morning that Beaut woke him up around 3am with an urgent need to go outside and let her bowels loose upon the world. Knowing this, I was diligent about taking her to the park to do her business, again, when I got up, taking her and her poopy butt far away from the inside of our home. Our normal routine goes something like this - take dog to park, dog poops, human scoops poop, scooped poop is placed in a garbage receptacle, and eventually playtime ends and both dog and human return home. But today was different as, well, our dog had dog diarrhea.
If you've never had a dog or if you've had a dog but were never a responsible human, you probably don't know the dilemma this situation presents you with. For starters, you can't scoop diarrhea poop. It's liquid. And much like you don't try and collect your dog's urine from the grass, you can't try to scoop diarrhea dog pop. It only makes a bigger, grosser mess that has you gagging on your own vomit. So the dilemma when in public is what to do. It is clear to every other dog owner that your dog has moved into the poop-dropping position and completed his/her business. What isn't so clear, if the other humans aren't paying attention, is that instead of a nice, solid mass of crap that is easily scoopable, your dog has squirted out a jet of liquid poo. What did I do this morning after I saw Beaut leak her feces onto park grounds? I called her over and kept on walking.
There was only one other lady at the park with me and I knew immediately that her eagle eyes were upon me with a high level of incredulity (how could I do this at her park?) and disdain. I pretended to read my book as I walked around the field but kept track of the lady watching me. I was waiting for the inevitable. And as soon as I approached shoutable range, I got it:
"Aren't you going to pick that up?" Bitchy McBitcherson yells at me from her position of superior dog owner land.
"She's got diarrhea so you're welcome to it." I reply. And Bitchy instantly is apologetic as she realizes that I'm not a shitty, non-rule respecting dog owner that disses the very park my dog inhabits, I'm a realist. She knows, just as I do, that you can't scoop liquid poo.
This sad little tale ends with Beaut having an accident when I left the house for lunch. The dog had an attack of explosive diarrhea and while that sucks to come home to, at least we can be thankful she didn't purposefully crap in our shoes, on our bed, in our...
7 comments:
Catastrophic dog poo failure!
We have a procedure you might find useful in this situation (or when your critter unloads deep into a bed of ivy where no man has gone before and not even the red-shirt Enterprise expendable security people would go) and we call it, "the Oscar."
As in -- "best pseudo dog-poo scooping, bag tying and proud dropping into nearby receptacle" category of the Academy Awards. This allows a subtle white lie to pass unnoticed (except by the oblivious walker with then-tainted footwear), thus at least, setting a hypothetically good example for those with more solid matters to attend to and preventing chimp-esque pant-hooting[1] from over-eager but well intentioned McBitchies.
[1] http://www.discoverchimpanzees.org/activities/pant_hoots.php
I used to do that, the fake poo faux pick up, but then I started to feel guilty. Think of how many unused bags that adds to landfills every year, of how many trucks are driving around the country spouting their gaseous fumes into the environment carting around all those fake poo bags. Plus the expense - we'll have college to pay for in 2025. It's just wasteful consumerism. So, as much as it bothers me to have people think I'm a bad dog owner and park participant, I find a well-timed "diarrhea" comment usually shuts them up.
And that, gentle reader, is why Betty prefers to march along clutching the pseudo-bag until out of visual range of the prying eye, then sticks the bag back in her hat brim (yes, it does look a bit Clampett-esque, but you always know "where yer bag's at."
I have much to learn, Obe One Betty. That is AWESOME! It really does make me feel bad to be viewed as a bad pet owner. That, and I'm one of those Bitchy McBitcherson people who shoot the evil eye when I see someone ignoring the dog poo duties.
Oh no, poor Beaut! That's the worst! And to have Bitchy McBitcherson staring you down! The agony! Rocco's had the runs quite a few times, but luckily no one was ever around to scold me. I did make the mistake recently of letting him squat and pee over an ornamental grass in the neighbor's yard--JUST as she pulled her car into the drive. I can't even look her in the eye anymore...There's that awful shame and I just want to say, "I know! I know better! It'll never happen again!" But I can't.
Since you seemed impressed with the bag-in-the-hat idea, it's now immortalized on the T-dog blog:
http://tinyurl.com/2lj89b
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