A bone of contention – feeling filthy over ‘trespooing’ dogs
On our grass verge are four dog poos. We own zero dogs. It’s a can of worms, the whole dog/cat thing. I know it is, but I’m going there.
I like dogs, on the whole. If they come as a package deal with a sensible human who can vouch for their temperament or quickly snap them back on to their lead, I have no problems.
The issue is that we humans aren’t always that sensible when it comes to our pets.
Take those semi-regular social media debates about dogs running off their leads, which never fail to get my hackles up.
‘‘Well, MY dog is thoroughly trained and would never hurt a fly!’’ people insist huffily – which may be totally correct, except that there isn’t some natty and instantly recognisable system for the rest of us to know that about your pooch. They aren’t colour-coded.
When your anonymous canine is charging towards my children on the Inlet Walkway, tongue a-flapping and ears a-bouncing, I can’t just glance at it and think, ‘‘Oh good, a green dog. That’s a safe one’’.
If the dog is known to us and has a history of being child-friendly, we’ll happily pause to shower it with pats, but we haven’t yet worked our way through the town’s entire Dog Directory to get to know each and every one.
We dogsit for my aunty’s pooch sometimes, and it’s great fun. She unearths every single tennis ball on the section – even several that predate our time in this house – and my wee boys play endless games of fetch with her. They’re learning to be quiet and calm around her if they want to give her pats, and to stay a few paces back when she’s eating. She’s socialising them, possibly better than I am.
We’ve also walked our neighbour’s dog a few times, which is about the perfect level of dog responsibility for me. She tows the kids around the block with singleminded determination, which just manages to be more entertaining than stressful.
She has adopted us, wandering across the road to our section and, if no-one is outside to give her pats, she heads to the greenhouse and expertly removes the lid to the chicken food drum, tossing it aside before helping herself to a dainty
feed of grains. Sometimes she has a little dig in the compost, too, to see what treasure she can pilfer from the chickens.
None of this I mind – my children are dedicated scavengers, too, although usually from people’s pantries rather than their compost heaps – but I don’t have much good humour when it comes to discovering her discharges on our property.
The final straw came last week, when I caught her backing up and relieving herself on to the tender leaves of our oregano bush. This put something of a dampener on pizza night, and I did what I should have done weeks ago and sent a message to her owner, politely asking what could be done about this decidedly First World problem.
The neighbour promised to keep the gate more firmly shut, and apologised for her pet’s ‘‘trespooing’’, a phrase that delighted me so much that I forgave the pooch immediately.
The poo, you see, is the other thing that I can’t abide when it comes to dogs. I have two children, so I have cleaned up plenty of bodily waste in the last five years. Oh, the places I have cleaned it from.
When people toss up between having another child or perhaps just getting a dog instead, I can’t help but think that at least you can potty-train a child. I mean, it’s not the best reason to have one, but when you are the household’s Chief Excrement Eliminator, it is a definite consideration.
To give balance to this disdainful doggy rant, I must point out that we have two cats.
Before we got cats, the neighbourhood’s felines were using our garden beds as their toileting spot. I bought a small jar of cayenne pepper and sprinkled it over the garden beds. This deterred them surprisingly well. I went out and bought a much larger jar of cayenne pepper, but have never needed to use it because that same week, we acquired two tabbies of our own. I don’t know where the neighbourhood cats are convening now, but it’s not on our property. Who knew that cats were the best deterrent for, well, cats?
I don’t want to be too gleeful about this, because it’s a fair argument that my cats’ covert toileting habits are no less disgusting than the more overt and proud efforts of our neighbour’s dog.
Cats are sneakier in every way – there’s no shutting a gate when it comes to felines. If yours is the unfortunate garden that has been chosen as the latest neighbourhood litter tray, I can only apologise.
I can also offer you a very large jar of cayenne pepper.