I usualy don’t “rant” here…cause really - who among you wants to hear me bitchin…BUT…
I’m running the other day at lunch through a “higher-end” LI neighborhood and I see a small truck/van pull up to a house. It’s for a service called “Scooby-Poop.” I chuckle at first thinking that if my kids saw that, they’d want one immediately.
But then I got to thinking…which is always dangerous for me…
Have people actually become so incredibly lazy that: They can no longer walk their dogs, thus allowing them to crap all over their backyards? Not only do people fail to remove their fat asses off of the couch and out from in front of the latest gripping episode of “Judge Whoever” to take their poor neglected dog for a walk…but now they’ve got to call in a specialist to help clean up the mess??
A wise man once said, “Who ARE these people?” How much disposable cash do you need to “require” this sort of service? And who was the absolute genius who first realized that the end of civilization is so near and first came up with the idea?
We’re sort of “between dogs” right now, but I never really found it all that difficult to walk my dog - once I passed the age of 12, anyway.
Kinda off the subject, but has cleaning up after your dog (outside) always been an issue? Maybe I’ve never owned one since I was a kid and I was irresponsible then . . . not sure. But I grew up in the suburbs and I recall, if your dog did it outside . . . be it in your backyard, the neighbors front yard or the park, the dog did good and was rewarded - good dog! Inside . . . bad dog! If you lived somewhere that required cleaning up after a dog (like on Park Avenue) then owning a dog was probably not a good idea.
Am I way off base here or did something change somewhere along the line and I was . . . not paying attention?
Hey, if I had an extra $30 a month, I’d do it too. Why not? We have an acre yard. Our dogs MOSTLY poop in one area, but you still have to comb the whole thing to find all the land mines. I can certaily think of better things to to with 30-60 minutes of my time every week.
Same thing with cleaning my house. If I had anotehr $150 a month to spare, you can bet your sweet bippy there would be someone dusting, tidyig, and mopping the floors and washing the windows every other week…and it wouldn’t be me.
if someone let’s their dog crap on my lawn/property and they don’t clean it up and I see them?..I bag it up and follow them back home where they get it hand delivered.
We never cleaned up after our dogs either. We dedicated a part of the yard that was where the dog did his business and everyone stayed out of that area unless you where taking the dog there to take a dump. The poop decomposed normally and went away…that was always the area with the really green grass.
If you have a really small yard or really big dog(s) I can see a problem with the poop gathering quicker than it’s disappearing. People with dog runs or kennels have to clean that out as well as the poop doesn’t seem to go away as fast as when it’s in grass and uncovered.
When you walked your dog, did you clean up the crap or leave it for someone else to do?
We’ve got 4 dogs. They mostly crap in our back yard and I clean it up daily - takes about 5 minutes. The dogs are confined to an area of the yard about 20x50. We’ve got flowers and vegetables in other areas of the yard and don’t want the dogs messing in there. When we walk our dogs we take bags for cleaning up the crap if they go. My wife runs with 3 of the dogs 3 times a week for about 4-5 miles per run. They usually crap in our yard before they go running. The 4th dog is too old and too small to run that far.
Like maid services, someone saw a need for this service and developed a business. It’s not anything new, but is mostly seen in more well off areas.
As an adult, I’ve only had one dog at a time. The last one, when he did his business near a home, in the street, etc. I picked it up…In the wooded areas surrounding where we lived, I usually didn’t.
I’ve had as many as two dogs at once - but we’re going back about 25 years now. And back then, we didn’t pick it up, but again I lived in a somewhat under-developed neighborhood with lots of wooded lots - so it didn’t make much difference.
It’s not the process here that I find ironic/amusing. I understand the need to clean up after your dog. It was more of a general societal observation thing - ya know, an unfounded, unsubstantiated commentary on how lazy some people are.
I’d be interested in finding out if this was purely an “American invention.” This being another example of how spoiled we are here compared to alot of other societies…
“ya know, an unfounded, unsubstantiated commentary on how lazy some people are.”
I think it says more about how wealthy some people are rather than having anything at all to do with laziness. Lazy people don’t bother to pick it up at all, either by themselves or by paying someone to do it.
There is likely a whole raft of services the rich utilize that wouldn’t even occur to folks of more modest means.
We have 3 dogs and they do go in our back yard (and on walks) and I pick it up once a week before I mow and on walks. I hate picking it up but it is the cost of a dog(s) and if I could let it decompose I would but with three it just doesn’t work. I suppose if I was trying to figure out what to do with another X$ a week I would consider it. I tell my wife that we just have to figure out some way to put dog doo to productive use and we can retire:)
We have people who let dogs dump on lawns in our neighborhood and it fires me up but I never can catch them.
'd be interested in finding out if this was purely an “American invention.” This being another example of how spoiled we are here compared to alot of other societies.
Well, in some countries they don’t clean up after them…they just clean them up and eat them.
Up until two months ago I had 3 dogs all over 100 lbs. (one of them died). They get walked every day but they have to do their business in our yard before they walk. They generate A LOT of poop. I collect it every week and throw it into the woods. I tried flushing it down the toilet so it would be treated properly but it is full of grass and the toilet kept getting clogged.
One of my real concerns about throwing it in the woods is that said poop decomposes slowly and runs off into wetlands. So, untreated waste is going into the water supply. There are studies about the effects of this when people were encouraged to dump their poop in storm drains. Not good for people who drink the water.
I would think all the environmentalists would be thrilled that people pay to have this poop taken away and treated properly not rant about how lazy everyone is.
But hey…if the choice is destroy the environment or be labeled as lazy…
Lazy people . . . hmmm . . perhaps when I was a kid I was lazy, I don’t know. I don’t think that’s why it happened, I think that was just the norm. If some grown-up had followed me home with it in a bag and gave it to me, I probably would have laughed and said, “Why did you go to all that trouble, why didn’t you just tell me and I would have picked it up . . it’s nothin’ to get mad about.” I mean, we played tackle football in the yard stepped, tackled, rolled in it occasionally. It wasn’t pleasant but I just looked at it as stinky mud. I am pretty sure that back then the parks didn’t have signs and little baggies to be used.
My question is this: has something changed? If so what, when, why? Or maybe I was just operating under a different set of notions.
"maybe I was just operating under a different set of notions. "
That’s probably it.
Your parents likely did a whole bunch of things that you never paid attention to, but they got done nonetheless. I never picked up dog crap as a kid either, just as my son has yet to do it.
One of my dogs refuses to poop on a leash. This is probably because when he was a puppy and we were running he started to sqaut in the middle of a road (with a lot of traffic) and I “yelled” at him and pulled him to keep running. He and I will run 9-10 miles and he won’t go. He like’s the back yard. Sometimes he will go if we are hiking and he is off the leash, but he has his ‘routine’ that he does in the yard. He gets impatient when my other dog stops to go.
I paid a neighbor kid to clean up my yard a couple of times. I think a few others in my neighborhood saw him doing that and started using him. He got to play with the dogs and make some money (I paid him $10 a day, 2 x a week). I thought about a professional service too. There are probably things you pay for that others would never think about paying for. I don’t like cleaning up dog poop from my yard, but it needs to be done, someone is willing to do it for a cost, it’s a cost I’m willing to pay.
*Am I way off base here or did something change somewhere along the line and I was . . . not paying attention? *
**
I’m not sure, but I always clean up after my dog. Every once in awhile my actions are reinforced when a neighbor threatens my or my dogs life if I don’t pick it up (I always have a bag in my hand ready to pick up when this happens). Yeah, you could say I don’t live in the best neighborhood in America…
I don’t think you are off base here. These times we lve in are crazy. I hear all of the time that there is a recession (MI) and money is tight, but I still see people spending what seems to be crazy money. When we had our dogs I had one rule, cleaning up the dogs mess was the kids’ job, and they had a choice. They could either pick it up off the ground OR scrape it off of my shoes and the tractor tires.
Another job that is amazing to me that people will pay for is to open and close their pools. In our area, you pay up to $500.00 for an open and $500.00 for a close. That is a ton of money to me for one day’s work. Sure, it is a pain in the neck having to crub the winter cover and all of that, but I think I can do a lot of scrubbing for $500.00.
The only thing I can think is that these people spend so much time working that they don’t have enough time to do the regular maintenance at their homes. Of course, why do they have a pet then?..but I imagine that is a topic for another day.
our pugs get walked 4 times a day–everyday. there is alot of poop. we pick it up every single time. and guess what? it gets old.
did you consider the possibility that maybe these people are traveling, and rather than have their dog boarded, they just hire the service that exercises their dog, etc?
i don’t think it’s lazy to have a service like this; especially if the people are loaded and spend their time making money instead. some people’s time is so valuable they’re much better off spending the time on things that generate income; as opposed to picking up poop. can’t say i blame them. (if you were worth several hundreds or thousands of dollars per hour, would you pick up poop?)
honestly, i’d much prefer to bitch about the people who have animals and abuse or neglect them; as opposed to those who do have animals and go to such an extent as this to take care of them.
additionally, let us not forget what we spend our time and money on. most people think the lot of us is nuts–how much do these bicycles we ride cost?
the truth is; everybody has their thing. professional pooper scoopers, etc. who knows, maybe it’s a lucrative business. it’s capitalism; these are things that make our world go around.
