How To: A Dog Poop-Free Yard

My wife and I live in a neighborhood with several dogs, including two of our own. In our area the yards are small and the houses close together. My wife and I are religious about picking up after our dogs when they do their business. It makes sense for a million different reasons. Common sense. We buy the cute little rolls of plastic bags that cost way too much for what they're used for.

I am dumbfounded as to why other people think its ok to let their dogs do their business in our yard, and leave it for me to deal with. (In reality I'm not really surprised, which is even worse.) What could possibly be the reasoning. Bad back? I will buy you a long-handled picker-upper thing so you don't have to bend over.

I got to thinking one day as I was logging on to my computer, noticing all of my neighbors' wireless networks (Linksys1002, SarahHome, Guest11, etc.) that this would be the perfect place for an anonymous broadcast message. So, I changed the name of my wireless network to PickUpYourDogsPoop, knowing full well the rest of the neighbors would see it.

They did.

One afternoon as my wife was arriving home from work she came upon a group of neighbors visiting in the street as they often do. She approached as they were talking about some idiot that changed their wireless network name to PickUpYourDogsPoop. My wife, not knowing the definition of anonymous said proudly, "Oh that's us." (Never trust her with a secret.)

To make a long story short, one neighbor in particular got up in my wife's face and unleashed a tirade of profanities, going on and on about our choice of wireless network names. I think its safe to say the neighbor didn't like it. Curiously, she has dogs.

Ever notice that when you call someone's bad behavior to their attention, YOU become the problem for bringing the issue to the surface? How dare you? How about not causing the problem in the first place?

Anyway, amazingly the amount of poop in our yard has decreased dramatically. To nearly zero as a matter of fact.

Following the confrontation between the happy neighbor and my wife in the street I wanted to change our wireless network name to TakeYourMeds. My wife talked me out of it.