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Dog Poo for Dummies

(C’mon people, it’s not that hard!)
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It's a beautiful sunny spring day in Whistler, perfect for a dog walk. You head down the valley trail and laugh as you watch your dogs frolic like a couple of double-dipping bankers on Wall Street.

The melting snow banks sparkle in the sun, and you realize that you truly do live in "The Best Place On Earth" (a license plate in the parking lot said so). Until you spot it. Large, steaming piles of it, all over the valley trail.

Yup, dog shit and lots of it. You quickly check your pockets to make sure you have poop bags in case your dog drops a load, and then wonder why you bother. No one else seems to, well, give a crap, so what's the point? Why, just yesterday you watched an unattended, large-sphinctered canine evacuate his bowels in the children's playground and angrily wondered what you could do to send a message to the lazy owners.

Like follow the dog home with the fragrant pile in a shovel, leave it on the owner's front porch in a brown paper bag, set it on fire and ring the door bell. Yeah that's it! You'll become the new superhero "Dog Poop Vigilante Girl" and be celebrated by grateful neighbours far and wide...

But of course you don't because you might get caught. And you're in your forties.

With the spring thaw the problem is brutally apparent, the retreating snow revealing the craps of Christmas past. It's truly disgusting.

It's so bad in fact that my neighbourhood looks as if a large band of incontinent nomads packed up their tents and moved on.

Sadly, it's not much better anywhere in the valley and I'm not the only one that's pissed off. Angry letters are appearing in the paper, ranting articles (one just last week) and handwritten signs admonishing dog owners to pick up are appearing along the valley trail. If you bring up the subject at any gathering you're suddenly inundated by frustrated people that want to form a gang, hunt down the guilty parties and pelt them with doodie. 
(Dogs themselves must find the situation amusing. I worked with a comedian once who had a great joke about it. He says: "It must really confuse the dogs. You spend all this time training them to poo outside, then you go out with them, and then, then you pick it up! The dog must be thinking, well, heck if you want it, why don't I just shit inside?")

So why do so many people not pick up their dog's poo? It's blatantly obvious that it's the mannerly and hygienic thing to do. There's enough signs, bag dispensers, and ads in the newspaper to choke a dumpster. After extensive research around town and trudging through many kilometres of trails, I've discovered why. Here they are.

The top five lame-assed excuses for not picking up dog poo:

Excuse #1-- "It really stinks, and it's all warm and squishy."

Retort #1 - Duh, yours is too and you don't just leave it around. Get over it you baby, it comes with the territory. If you want a pet you have to deal with the downside. The fact is, dogs are just adorable poo factories. There's not a lot of constipated dogs out there. My puny nine-pound pug Weezer can have shits that even I'm jealous of. Dogs are clockwork regular, and if you can't handle it, get a wind up dog.

Quick tip #1 - Try the raw food diet available at pet stores. Cuts your dogs output in half, gives them a shiny coat and may cost you $300 bucks a month depending on the dog. You decide.

Excuse #2 - "The poo will break down overt ime because it's natural. I'm adding fertilizer to the soil."

Retort #2 - As you may have noticed it doesn't break down that fast, just ask my boots. Come to think of it, maybe I will leave it at your front door so you can see just how fast it disappears. You won't clean it up (because that's been predetermined), so enjoy.

Now some people will argue: what's more environmentally friendly, thousands of plastic bags going to a landfill or letting it decompose naturally? It's a good argument, but no dice. Animal waste, like ours, is toxic and should ideally be flushed down the toilet and go through a wastewater treatment plant. The bags our muni provides are biodegradable and keeps the poo off your designer footwear and out of children's mouths.

If you really want to do the right thing then flushable poo bags are available at www.flushdoggy.com . It's a very informative site about how bad dog waste is for fresh water sources, like when spring snow melt washes accumulated dog poo into our storm drains. (See 'Lame Excuse #5 which will explain just how natural 'it' is).

Excuse #3 - "I forgot to bring a bag."

Retort #3 - Sure you did. I personally forget almost everything in my life, but with poo bags I'm pretty good. If I can do it, you can. And with all the dispensers around, that excuse doesn't cut it anymore.

Excuse #4 - "A bag of poo is embarrassing to carry around."

Retort #4 - Get over yourself and try this angle: don't think of it as a rank bag of excrement, think of it as an incredibly stylish accessory that speaks gobs more about your character than, say, a Rolex. That bag o' crap says you're a responsible, caring and nurturing human. In fact, picking up poo is considered sexy! Yes boys, when a woman watches a man pick up their dog's dump it tells her that this is a man. A man who's in for the long haul, a man who can be counted on in her geriatric and incontinent years. That's way hotter than an overpriced watch. (Works for woman too.)

Excuse #5 - "My dog goes into the woods." Or, "I kick it off the trails into the woods." Or, "It's only one poo, and it's in the woods.""

Retort #5 - Nice try. It's at least an attempt to do the right thing, but it's not enough. My dogs sometimes won't go if someone's watching so I let them off their leash so they can hide. But I will go in and pick it up if it's not halfway down a cliff. Why just this morning I sunk cursing and pitchpoling thigh deep into the snow, but I got it! I got that turd!

Out of sight out of mind is still not okay. Why? One issue is groundwater. With over 1,200 licensed dogs in Whistler (and probably twice that many unlicensed and visiting dogs) taking two potty breaks a day that's a lot of crap. To be exact 1.25 million tons of it a year from licenced dogs along, a pile big enough to ski down. (Now there's a shitty day on the slopes. Har!)

But most importantly, poo is not "fertilizer." Just like our poo, it's full of toxins, parasites and general nastiness. Every time you ignore a pile it will sit there in the park, trail (or on your porch where I put it), and gradually wash away into our waterways. Think about that on a hot day when you want to take a dip in one of our lakes this summer (and that's a shitty swim! Stop me!)

Dog poo carries - and this is a short list - Giardia, Lepstospira, tapeworm, E.Coli and roundworm, all of which are diseases that humans can get. They're especially easy for kids to contract, since they love playing around in, well, everything.

It's easy for you to get sick too. How easy? For example, say your dog craps in the children's playground, and you don't pick it up. A few days later your hand inadvertently grazes the ground while you grab a stick to throw for your dog. The shit pile has spread around quite nicely by now by rain and little feet and you unknowingly get a nurdlet on your hand, and wipe the sweat out of your eye. You get ringworm and go blind.

Okay, NOW you have an excuse not to pick up the poo. Not really worth all that laziness now is it? But that's karma for you.

Have any of these points helped the case yet? If it still hasn't convinced the squeamish out there, think about this: Just because you've refused to deal with it means someone else will have to, and that's just not nice.

No one knows poo like a muni worker or a landscaper, and I asked a few to tell me their stories.

The first account comes from an anonymous muni employee who has crawled through every muni garden bed, planter and park in Whistler for the last 20 years. The shit she's seen will shock you. She writes;

"In the spring, a couple of years ago on the three fields at Spruce Grove, Muni crew picked up about six large garbage bags of dogshit, weighing about 150 kg. Gross!!!!

Most of the garbage cans along the valley trail in the winter are primarily filled up by thousands of little poobags. (Michele's note - "Wow, maybe some people do pick it up") Sometimes the bag inside the can has fallen down, leaving hundreds of little poobags [some open] all stuck on the inside of the metal garbage can. Yuck, the smell, especially in the spring thaw.

"Throwing those heavy garbage bags into the compacter... have occasionally brokee open, leaving a poor muni worker covered in crap and such.

"Walking over the snow at Miller Pond Park to change the garbage, a muni worker's foot broke through the snow causing him to fall forward. His arms stopped his face from smashing into a big turd by mere inches. It's like a mine field there.

"It's bad enough to see brown snow go through your snowplow chute when plowing the Valley Trail, but worse yet is when the chute gets clogged and you have to put your arm down it, to break up the clog.

These are just a few of the many..."

The next account comes from a a landscaper I know.

"Apparently the complex I live in, Millars Ridge, is the second-worst in the valley for sheer volume of crap. The winner for the most goes to _________________and is referred to as 'Pooville.'

"So celebrate Millars Ridge -we should be proud! We're number two, we're number two!

"But can we start having a little pride people?

And new mom Dana Wood writes:
"I could go on about this one for days. If I may put my two cents in:

I pick up crap when I walk the dogs, and I carry lots of extra bags for those folks who 'just ran out' or 'left them in my other coat.' There seem to be a lot of them out there! 

It seems the general rule of common courtesy is that you pick up crap if your dog goes where one would easily step in it - the valley trail, sidewalks, etc. Of course, it also seems this rule of courtesy goes out the window when no one is looking.

"The WORST is when you accidentally roll through a pile of crap with your stroller wheel(s), something I had never considered before I had a baby. Let me tell you, it really sucks when you have to scrub shit off of stroller wheels - as my darling husband will attest to...! (Come on, you didn't think I would be scrubbing it off, did you?)

"Extra note - You think stroller wheels are bad? How about rolling through a pile when you're in a wheelchair?"



This final account comes from a Village Host vollie, one who sees it all.



"Watching a visitor smoosh thru a massive pile of poo in their ski boots...well, it's special, 'cause there is something about the ski boots - the way it sticks, how it comes off the boots. It's guarateed to spread it from the village end to end. Because we have to be polite, we try to bring the scoopers over and suggest they may be of some use during the 'heat of the moment,' otherwise - once they start walking away... it's too late. The window of opportunity is gone, and - sigh - we end up doing doggie doo-doo-duty. Why is it okay to leave dog poo on the sidewalk? I don't get it. COME ON! PICK IT UP!"

Like I said earlier, people are mad. The reasons why have been laid out in front of you as plain as the Valley Trail/Hershey Highway. It's time to take action people. Educate yourselves. Try the WAG website for more info about the perils of poop and then just hold your breath and pick it up. Enjoy quality time with your dog and take them for a walk instead of just letting them out to roam and sully the streets alone - he/she might even get you a gift for mother/father's day.

Just Do It. A lot of people out there are watching you.

And they know where your porch is.

(I'd like to thank the website www.poonames.com for all the variations of the term 'poo.' And I only used a fraction of them.) 



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