I have two dogs. One of them is part coon hound, part german shephard and part beagle. His name is Mocha Java. Java is a good dog, he’s looks like a tired old man and moves pretty slow. He gets to wear the “collar of honor” a/k/a “the shocking collar of death” whenever we leave him alone because he is a howler. Java is well behaved, except, he doesn’t like small children and homeless men.

Then there is Sappho, of the plastic bag in the ass fame. Sappho was the first to come into my fold. I got her when I was a senior in college, living with a bunch of derelicts in a two bedroom apartment off campus. She’s been with me through thick and thin and sits nicely while I shave her so she looks like a shorn lamb ( I can’t stand the shedding) and hides in the bathtub during rainstorms, but Sappho does not know anything about where she should poop in the city. She is confused, confounded. “But you told me the world is my toilet. I used to just go outside, in the little world that was all fenced in. Every inch of it smelled like my poop and I could just go. What is this leash thing? Why is it on me? Where are you taking me?”

So, yes, Sappho still thinks that the world is her toilet. The other day we were out walking and in order to get to the garbage can we had to cross the street. Well, the urge struck her just as we were in the middle of the street and there she went – crouched down and pooped right in the middle of the street as the light is turning green. I had to pull her across the street (now, mind you she and Mocha have a tandem leash so I’m actually pulling both of them) and as I’m pulling she is leaving a trail of poop across the entire street, she is refusing to lift her ass off the street and walk across to go on the sidewalk like a normal dog. She is crouched down and I pull her and there is literally a streak of dog doo from the middle of the street to the sidewalk. So, now the dilemma is, do I clean it up or do I let some poor suburban schmoe drag that shit into his heated three car garage?

Guess which option I chose.