BY JEFF WHITE
Few things in life are as pompous as people allowing their purebred poodles to shit on your lawn without picking it up, but never mind all that; there’s far too little time for anger. In cases such as these, the anger must be replaced with good old-fashioned harshly-worded directives, but somehow never forsaking empathy.
Not that our lawn is completely free from canine waste to begin with, but it’s our canine waste. And Ernie is some sort of mixed up hound dog that we picked up from a shelter. And we’ll eventually get to scooping all his leftovers before the yard guys get there on Tuesday anyway. Promise. Nevertheless, that’s our yard, or at least inasmuch as our puritanical federal state of 250 years or so has defined it as being our yard. It’s a bunch of weeds anyway.
The clear pre-spring south Florida morning looked promising. Fortunately, we’d had friends over last week, which gave me more than enough excuse to clean the front bay window looking out into the small, circle drive and into the quiet street. Couldn’t have been clearer to witness the standard, middle-aged south Florida pseudo-retiree allow her extremely standard black poodle conduct its morning constitution upon our blessed collection of weeds, and then proceed to resume the walk without collecting said deposit.
Rage.
Then, reason… like I had the time to mess with this sorta thing. “Can I talk myself out of dealing with this right now?” Two factors ultimately contributed to righting this horrible wrong: 1. I was still a bit fuzzy from the extra servings of Christmas Scotch from the previous night, and 2. I already had my shorts on.
Granted, it rarely requires substantial effort to awaken my inner Southerner, and as far as I was concerned, this was an affront to not only my property, but also to the unspoken parameters that define a functioning society. Particularly those parameters involving dogshit.
Approaching the woman with faithful Ernie in tow, there was just enough of a voice in my head to remind me that this person, by definition, lives pretty close. Be sure not to promote an escalation worthy of our proud police force getting involved. Without adequate preparation where this might lead, in the early morning sunrise, I’m pretty sure I yammered something along the lines of “Hey! Did your goddamn dog just shit in my yard?!”, or something to a similar affect. I immediately realized that this may have been a bit of an aggressive opener, as the pseudo-retiree jumped back a bit, placing herself firmly on her heels. The pompous dog did much the same, which forced me to stifle a chuckle. Ernie was just glad we were getting out and about so early and was ready for anything.
And this is where you realize that there’s always another side of the story. The first thing this lady said was “Oh, I’m so sorry. We are out of bags and I was hoping to get back home to grab some and get back here to clean up. I’m just a couple of streets over, and I promise I’m usually very good at picking up after Kingston (Kingston, really?) but I just forgot to grab any new bags.”
Decision time. Is this lady trying to weasel out of her presumed neighborhood responsibility? It’s a poodle, for god’s sake, so there’s more than a fair chance that she actually might believe that both her’s, and her feckless pooch’s, shit don’t stink. Perhaps not, but it still takes up space in my yard.
Mind you, a mere 15 years ago, my training as a hard-nosed business consultant would have deployed, leading to a slew of hard-hitting questions that would have eventually resulted with this woman questioning her mere presence in the world. Times change, and rough edges are sanded. Sooner or later, it pays to start assuming the best in folks, rather than the contrary.
“I got a bag. So if I give you a bag, are you gonna go get that shit outta my yard?”
“Yes, and I’m just sorry. I promise I normally have bags, but we were just up late with Nathan’s meds, and I just forgot to grab a new roll of bags.” Long story short, Nathan had already had COVID, and was still having some of those lingering effects. He never got put on a vent and never had to go to the hospital, which in retrospect, may have been a bad thing. But he’s not gotten back to 100% just yet, and the docs have got him on a myriad of different scripts, which have got him completely twisted in terms of everyday, regular routines. Notwithstanding the fact that he and Betty (we exchanged formalities) owned a fucking poodle, they still were having a rough go with things as a result of all this madness. It wasn’t easy.
I found all this out as I listened to her offer the story whilst collecting Kingston’s product. For all I know, this lady was as slick as whale shit in an ice floe, and this was all a fat line. But you can tell, you really can tell. She wasn’t pained, she wasn’t defeated, she wasn’t “what are we going to do?” It was just a thing; something that had to be dealt with. I never got the notion that Nathan was, nor had ever been, in any real danger of dying. It had been a hassle-a burden, unnecessary, that was just going to be one more thing to handle as best they could. Without question, I’ve never witnessed anyone retrieve a pile of dog poo with more nonchalant dignity.
“Betty, thanks for doing that. I hope Nathan gets to feeling better. Sorry if I was a little grumpy with the-“
“No, no, no… I’ve yelled at people doing the same thing in my yard before and I’ve done exactly what you did. I really just wish I would’ve grabbed another fucking set of bags before I left.”
Now to be clear, she said that last refrain with an earthy chuckle and a smile. And we both had a chuckle and a smile.
-The End-
