Poop Fight

This is just a rant and a semi-funny story.

Let me start by saying, if you own or walk a dog… it’s your responsibility to pick up after him or her!!! Not doing so is just plain rude. I find it so annoying when people don’t clean up after their dogs, which happens a lot in my complex. Many people seem to bring their dogs over to our complex to walk their dogs, and then leave their droppings behind. I’m not sure why that is, other than they think our landscapers will take care of it.

A couple weeks ago, I was walking Jesse around our complex. There was a young woman walking her yellow lab down the street ahead of us. It looked like she was dressed for work. She was wearing a very cute pale grey suit and matching shoes. The dog stopped to poop. I knew that when he finished, she’d walk away without picking it up. I’ve seen her do this several times and it irritates me. It’s especially annoying because she walks her dog across the street from her complex, to let him poop on our lawns. They have grass over there too!

Anyway, while her dog was dumping a big load on the grass, I had time to approach her and I was about four feet away when he finished and they started to leave. Even though I was annoyed, I made sure to be very polite. I said, “Excuse me. Please pick up after your dog, here’s a poop bag.” Then I held out a bag.

She turned around, looked me up and down, and said, “F*** You! I’m in a hurry.” Then she started walking away again.

Not so politely, I said, “Pick up your dog’s shit! I’m sick of you bringing your dog over here to shit on my lawn and then leaving it for me to clean it up!”

She said, “F*** You, bitch! It’s not your lawn and the landscapers clean it up anyway. You want it picked up… do it yourself.”

Then I was totally pissed. First of all, it is my lawn; I’m a homeowner here. Yes, our landscapers are forced to clean up her dog’s poop, but that’s not what we pay them to do and it’s not fair for them to have to do it. I know it’s not pleasant to pick up poop; I do it several times a day and I often do pick up her dog’s poop myself. When I’m picking up after Jesse, I grab those poops that other people were too rude and lazy to get themselves.

She told me to pick it up myself, so I did. I quickly opened the bag, reached down, picked up the poop and pulled the bag back around the poop. Then I threw it at her. I threw it hard and amazingly accurately, and hit her square in her back. It made a nice squishy, splat sound when it hit, then it dropped to the ground and a little poop tumbled out.

She whirled around, looked down and saw the open poop bag. She looked up at me with this look of total confusion. To be honest, as soon as the bag hit her, I thought I’d probably bought myself a big fight. I half expected her to attack me; she’d had such a nasty attitude. Of course, that didn’t occur to me while I was throwing poop at her, I was too angry!

Instead, she almost started to cry. Then she hurried away, contorting herself to see her own back and wailing, “Oh my God, is there dog shit on me? What am I going to do, I don’t have time to change. Oh my God, what am I going to do?” I told her she didn’t have any poop on her, but she wouldn’t listen or couldn’t hear me. She just hurried away, muttering to herself.

I know it was wrong and childish for me to throw the poop at her. I shouldn’t have lost my temper and reacted in blind rage. It’s really not like me to lose it like that and I do feel bad about it. I still plan to apologize to her the next time I can, but I haven’t seen her since… until this morning.

Jesse and I were out for his morning potty walk. I saw the woman and her dog walking down the street away from us. They were too far away and walking too fast for us to catch up, so I will apologize to her the next time I’m able to, she can’t avoid me forever.

However, I did notice she was walking with her arm extended out to her side. In her hand dangled a full poop bag.