This morning a neighbor’s dog came to my front lawn and took a crap. I saw him as he was leaving. My wife saw him yesterday but he took off before she could get out in the yard to rattle and chase him away. The neighbors let this fat white-with-black-markings dog out in the morning and he roams at will, pausing only to crap in my front yard. I said I would Google this problem and my wife laughed. I put the question “how to stop a dog from crapping on a lawn” and instantly Google returned a hundreds of references. I summoned the wife to view the computer screen and said, “Look.”
It seems our problem is one shared by thousands of people who don’t own dogs but live close to irresponsible dog owners who lack the damn sense to train and or curb their dogs. Some suggestions revealed by the Google search include the mild (talk to your neighbor, put out Crap Away; call the dog police,) to the mad-as-hell (shoot the dog with a stun gun*; tie a nicely wrapped box of dog crap to the dog and send him home; staple a small dog to the neighbor’s door and keep stapling larger and larger dogs until the neighbors get the message.)
Citizens who go through daily life in the suburbs without this problem are generally unsympathetic to the victim and take the attitude “better on your lawn than the bottom of my shoe.”
I will work on this problem and if I achieve a “mild” solution I will share it with you via another blog entry. If I have to go to the “mad-as-hell” basket of ideas, well that’s a different story and it will probably be best to take Ben Franklin’s advice: three can keep a secret if two are dead.
[*A policeman in Round O, South Carolina, used a laser gun this week to subdue a Billy goat.]
