Poop Patrol

Sung to the tune of "I say a little prayer for you": Whenever I wake up, before I put on my...bathrobe, I let the dogs outside to poop.

True. Everyday. Somewhere between six and six-thirty. I can barely get the door open fast enough. I don't know exactly what is in Science Diet Puppy Food, the listed ingredients are surely a sham, but some combination of rocket fuel and laxative are unquestionably part of the mix. That and an expansion agent that actually allows a greater volume of matter to be expelled than was originally ingested. Yesterday at six A.M. we had a poop free lawn. At ten I counted eleven piles. These from two pups who together can't weigh thirty pounds. I'm not complaining mind you, merely stating the facts. In reality (that place where I live apart from all others) I am actually grateful. These are eleven piles of poop I can snatch up with the scooper and toss into the jungle with a quick underhanded softball snap of the wrist. The poop piles that appear subsequent to the morning cluster bombing frequently manifest themselves mysteriously indoors with nary a pup present. These are stealth poops placed strategically about by puppies who don't want the wrath of the two legged giants to rain down upon them in the form of "Bad Dog! Bad Dog! Outside!" and other such expressions of human displeasure that are so far akin to pissing up a rope for all the good they do. These pungent piles must be picked up with TP or paper towels, an act that places the highly odoriferous substance much closer to one's nose and invariably evinces a "show me your Yaeger face" of disgust. The dogs know that it is okay to poop outside. They know because they are rewarded by exclamations of approval from the same giants who are so unforgiving when they do their doggie dumping inside. What they have learned in their clever canine brains is not "woof woof let me out" but rather "heh heh heh, now's my chance, they're not looking." We three, the giants, are at wit's end, which is to say "it ain't funny Mcgee." We watch like hawks for the opportunity to snatch up a squatting puppy and flee with it to the great outdoors but our efforts are seldom rewarded. I now believe the dogs are working in concert. "Look at me, look at me" one will puppy yap, "I'm doing something adorable and cute." While we chuckle or ooh and aah, whichever is called for, the other quietly leaves evidence of its hyper speed digestive tract and then comes to join in the fun with dog number one. When the evidence is discovered, the guilty pup just looks askance as if saying, "not mine, wasn't me, you can't prove a thing." I have resorted to lecturing at length, but this too has proved fruitless. "Listen you floppy eared bozos" I tell them, "a dog who doesn't learn to do their business exclusively outside has to live outside. Get it?" They don't. But then, as I've noted before, my Dog, like my Spanish, is not all that fluent. I have even tried to emulate Cesar Milan, but the mutts didn't understand whispering either.

Alas and alack and oh well. As my friend Bill Baer used to say, "It's a doggie dog world." And that's the truth.