Grey Poop-On

I could never own a dog. As a child I loved my dog Riggins, a brown mutt named after the inimitable gridiron star John Riggins (inimitable in the sense that who else would pass out drunk at a State Dinner after telling Justice O’Connor to “loosen up Sandy Baby”). But dog ownership has evolved in the days since I grew up in rural southern Maryland, where dogs roamed free (and were stolen if they were purebred hunting dogs like Freckles, the Brittany Spaniel who preceded Riggins and hopefully enjoyed the rest of her presumed life as a proper bird dog). Dog ownership now requires picking up your dog’s shit with a bag wrapped around your hand like a glove, and then carrying said bag around the ‘hood with you like a Gucci handbag. I am decidedly not down with this, a stance only hardened by my recent stint walking Bo, my friend Jason’s beagle, whose poop I handled, bagged, and gallivanted with down the sidewalk.

The first problem is the handling. The texture of dog doody , combined, of course, with that unique scent, is singularly nauseating: the warm squishiness, or the warm firmness, depending upon the quality of the scat, was never intended for fondling. Holding dog poo in one’s hand is like cleaning cat pee off the floor with the sleeve of one’s shirt. That there is a layer of wafer thin plastic between skin and kaka detracts but little from the effect; remember, sex with condoms still leads to orgasms. Pawing pup’s poo-poo, baggie notwithstanding, still leads to nausea (when Bo pooped on the floor and wifey sent me to clean it up at 7am it led to some serious dry heaves- had I already had my Cap’n Crunch wifey would have had to clean up barf and feces- “Stays crunchy, even in dogshit!”)

But the larger problem is post poop-scoop. One can not maintain a baseline of human dignity while carrying around a bag of canine crap. One is immediately transformed from the master of a beast to the beast’s nanny. There is something amazing about changing your own child’s diapers; their shit literally doesn’t stink. But as close as I was to Riggins, and as much as Jason dotes on Bo, their shit is still nasty. Women were put on Earth to rule over men, and men are the boss of dogs. A man who carries around dog shit just got bucked down from sergeant to private, and a woman who carries around dog shit is akin to the Queen of England squatting in a port-o-jon; it just shouldn’t happen.

The French are reportedly shocked when they witness Americans walking around carrying bags of doggy-doo. Of course, the French pay minimum wage to immigrant labor to sweep up Parisian poop, but that aside, I am with the French on this one. Say what you want about the French, but those are some dignified folk. Their horror at our oblivious doggy servitude is enlightening. So I say raise a glass of Perrier, and let the shit fall where it may.