Dog S***

Disclaimer: This is the first entry in Grand’s REAL Adventures – a PG13 version of my new life in NY/NJC. Here we go.

Ahem.

I cannot comprehend people who have giant dogs in little places.  It’s a weird thing in NYC and NJ – people live in little bitty spaces and have dogs bigger than they are living with them.  The other day in my apartment, a tiny woman (maybe 100 lbs?) was trying to maintain control over her gargantuan Doberman. Why?  The dog could do way more damage than any aggressor could.  I wonder how that will work out. 

When I was in the lobby with the tiny woman and the Doberman, I looked over at the packages that had arrived, and noticed two big florist boxes.  Ah, flowers - how lovely! Then I looked closer.  They weren’t flowers – they were live sod potty pads for dogs!  Seriously!?  How gross would that be – to lug out a pee and poop sodden heavy-ass patch of grass to the trash chute?  It wouldn’t crash down with that delightful crash – it would squish down and land with a mushy plop.

If I’m being honest – when I’m not looking at the world through rose colored glasses, I think the word I utter the very most since moving to the East Coast is “seriously?!”  Like the giant drooly St. Bernard in the car the other day in the parking lot.  Who wants that much drool?  I think St. Bernards need to roam freely in wide open spaces where their drool evaporates in the wind.

Maybe that’s what this part of the blog should be called – SERIOUSLY?

And yappy dogs.  Why would anyone ever own a yappy dog?  Do their not hear the incessant yapping?  Are people yap blind? Or would that be yap deaf?  We have some yappy dogs in this building that once they get started, they can go on for hours.

Now poop.  Let’s discuss that daunting phenomenon.  You live in New York City in your 500 square foot apartment with your 150 lb. dog.  Its poop is larger than some of your rooms.  For sure the amount of dog food you’d have to buy would fill all of the closet space.

Oh well – I guess that is everyone’s problem but mine.  I have a totally gross story that has haunted me since the 1980’s.  I worked at the Police Department in Laramie in the late 80’s as a  transcriptionist. (Cops would record their reports on mini-tapes, and we would take those tapes, put on headphones, listen and type them on paper in a typewriter.) Hard to imagine now that we have talk to text – hell, it’s all unimaginable. 

Nonetheless, one of the calls that the cops were called to was a welfare check. Apparently there was a man who lived alone with 6 big German Shepherds. He hadn’t been seen by his neighbors for a few weeks, and by the time the police were summoned, there wasn’t very much of the gentleman remaining.  Dogs will do what dogs will do.  That gruesome scene description has stuck with me nigh on 30 years.  No German Shepherds for me.

Now, on a lighter note. One of my favorite chuckles when I’m sitting looking out the window is watching the dog watchers outside.  Sometimes they’ll have up to 10 dogs at a time – and it is the funniest thing when one of the dog walkers encounters another dog walker – it’s like ALL THE DOGS. It is canine chaos.  It is doggie drama.  It is fur flying and shit shitting.  Makes me very grateful for my day job.