Watching a neighbor walk her dog. The dog squats. Neighbor picks up the pile. While the neighbor is bagging it, dog squats again a few feet away. This time neighbor ignores it.
Questions:
1) Maybe neighbor is out of bags?
2) Is neighbor merely going through the motions — i.e., by picking up first pile she satisfies her public obligation and thus may ignore the second pile?
3) Neighbor is doing the best she can in an admirable attempt at turd triage?
4) All of the above?
Zen bonus question: If a dog shits in the grass and no one steps in it, did it really happen?
The neighbor has the willpower to pick up one pile, but a second requires too much willpower. I’m guessing the dog usually creates a single pile on a walk.
The zen question can be better asked with a ruminant in the lead role, who eats the grass before leaving the manure pile.
Mea culpa,
It’s been my experience that it’s #1. I’ve tried reusing bags, however more often than not, it has not turned out well. Wiping your hands off on the local leaves does not work well, especially this time of year.
My guess is that she ran out of bags. Happens now and again to us. Getting multiple dumps into a single bag is sometimes not an option.
In my neighborhood, the most annoying dog-walkers are those who seem to think that if it’s in the street, it doesn’t count!
I’m a proponent of the single bag theory. Been there.
I gotta tell you, out here in California we have a lot of people in my neighborhood who will (a) bag the crap and then (b) throw the plastic bag full of crap on the sidewalk.
Never understood that reasoning.
My favorites are the little blue-haired old ladies who let their poodle take a sump on your lawn, then walk way like that is the most natural thing in the world.
They seem to be hard of hearing too ;-)
But as far as your question and that particular neighbor I will go with door # 1.
She’s out of bags. She brought two, one as a mitten, one as a receptacle. The second turd was an unplanned-for contingency.
reason #135 not to live in a city
J is distracted by a neighbor with a dog, dog got distracted and didn’t finish his business in one go, neighbor is distracted from her turd-picking by…whoknowswhat…maybe by J’s staring at her?
“She brought two, one as a mitten, one as a receptacle.”
Why use two? I use a single bag for both tasks. I put it over my hand, pick up the doggy doo, then invert the bag while holding onto said poo and tie it up. Easy.
I also tend to stuff any bags which are too small to use for garbage into the dog toy bag so that I always have plenty.
I’ve been known to return to the scene and pick up after our dogs if I don’t have the means on hand to clean up after them. I don’t care if it’s the furthest point in our walk, I refuse to leave dog crap in front of or on someone else’s yard. (Our dogs don’t like to do their business anywhere but their own backyard, as a rule)
I was a judge at a local science fair this Spring. One of the projects was two high school girls asking, which is cleaner for the hands, the city-provided “gloves” or saran-wrap?
Their methodology was decent but inadequately rigorous but I gave them extra points for poising a social-relavant question with a possibly useful answer.
Jonathan,
I presume the “Is neighbor merely going through the motions” bit was intentional, in which case most comment posters didn’t see the joke.
Mike, “movement” in the title was also intentional – did you see the joke?
“Not commenting” does not mean “not noticing”
“…and then (b) throw the plastic bag full of crap on the sidewalk.”
I ride a local paved bike trail fairly frequently, and I’ll see those bags off to the side, as if the idiots that dropped them there expect some kind of dog crap pickup service to be making the rounds in a day or two.