My daughter left on a vacation recently and asked me to spend two weeks picking up poop around my neighborhood.  No, she didn’t put it quite that way.  She said, “Will you take care of my spoiled dog, Milo?”  (I added the word ‘spoiled’ for accuracy.)  Now that Milo’s visit has passed, I ordered a t-shirt that says, “I Spent Two Weeks with Milo the Spoiled Dog, and I Survived!”

Dogs provide countless intangible benefits.  Three that I particularly enjoyed were:

1. Being routinely woken up at 3 a.m. by a high pierced whining outside my bedroom door.
2. Discovering that Milo had transformed one of my favorite sandals into a chew toy. (On the bright side, they only cost $115.)

And my favorite –

3. Going to pick Milo up from the groomer and being told it would be “no charge.” Because he was such a wonderful dog, you ask? No. Because after I left, he kept trying to bite the groomer.  So they locked him up until I could collect him.

His visit allowed me to learn more about my neighborhood.  One thing I learned was that someone VERY grumpy lives down the street.  This is a sign the neighbor tacked to a tree outside the house –

I was surprised it said “pee” instead of “poop.”  While I am not a certified arborist, I do know my way around a hemlock.  And I can’t imagine why this person gives a rat’s rear end whether dogs pee on this tree.  However, I want to emphasize that although Milo is a whiner, and as we have previously established, a biter, I must defend him on one point.  He has never peed on this tree.  Half a million others, but not this one.

The day after I discovered this sign, I posted a sign below it that said, “My dog didn’t pee on your tree, BUT I DID!  (And I just ate a plate of asparagus.)  You’re welcome.  THX.”

Okay, I didn’t tack that sign beneath the first one.  I tacked it above the first one.

I walked Milo three times a day, and while I don’t want to be too graphic, he pooped one to three times per walk.  My daughter had left a couple of rolls of poop bags, but they ran out within a few days.  Maybe I was feeding him too much.  Milo was certainly operating at full capacity.  So after I dropped Milo off at the groomer so he could terrorize the staff, I went to the poop bag section to stock up.  Here it is –

When I saw it, I thought, “Hello, Sally!”  I had NO idea!  A whole new world of poop bags lay before me as far as the eye could see –  Scented, Unscented, 50% thicker, 2X thicker, and for the environmentally conscious, Biodegradable.  Spread before me in all the colors of the rainbow.  I ultimately chose the ones that had little pictures of poop printed all over them.  It just felt right.  Here they are –

At $12.49 for 120 bags, that’s about ten cents a poop.  For a guy from Alsea who never dreamed I would someday be a dog’s personal poop valet, ten cents wasn’t the outer limit –  it was the Twilight Zone.

All said, I already miss Milo and look forward to his next visit.  But mostly, I look forward to the arrival of my new t-shirt.

 

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