Poop Patrol

Greyhounds are a competitive breed. And when you have more than one, as I do, the poop in your yard goes up exponentially. I swear, two greys will subconsciously try to outshit each other. And when there are four or five, you’d swear by the evidence in your yard that a camel or two has also passed through.

I’ve had seven greys of my own over the years – each adopted through Greyhound Pets, Inc. — and with more than two dozen greyhound fosters and vacationing dogs added to the

Yin and Yang

mix, I’ve had as many as five greys staying in my house at once. That makes for lots of crap in the yard and plenty of practice with the scooper. I’m a terrible golfer, but my 6-inch putting stroke is deadly.

Another thing about greyhound potty habits, they like to spread it around. My fenced backyard is about 2,700 square feet, which makes poop patrol a veritable Easter egg hunt. The fence line is always well-mined, especially the north fence, as if a Viking horde lurked just  on the other side, awaiting only a non-slip surface to invade.

Frosty mornings are the best time to scoop, because the turds are hard and easy to manipulate. I collect the specimen in empty dog food bags, wrap those in garbage sacks and dispose of them with other household refuse. Still, I’ve fantasized about many potential uses. If you could catch a buzz smoking dog dung, I’d be a rich man. Imagine that greyhound droppings were the missing catalyst in the formula for rapid weight loss. Dealing with high schoolers who park near my home and empty their ashtrays and McDonald’s breakfast bags under their cars, I’m sometimes tempted to litter back by tossing a turd or two on their windshields. I’ve never done that, but if war were declared, I’d be a dog shit superpower.

Speaking of frosty dog piles, they sparked a euphemism where I used to work as a copy editor in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer sports department.  One day, when desk banter touched on the topic of dog shit, someone used the term “steamer” to describe a turd so fresh you can still see the vapors wafting off. Thereafter, “steamer” became a staple of copy desk jargon, generally describing the ragged work of stringers reporting on high school games,  as in, “Oh my god, he threw a steamer on my plate right at deadline!”

I once proofed a posting by P-I art critic Regina Hackett on her Art to Go blog on the work of Andres Serrano, who had a show at Yvon Lambert in New York featuring 66 large Cibachrome prints of human and animal dung. Now, my dogs are no Serrano, but I swear that over the years I’ve scooped up likenesses of Popeye, Elmer Fudd and Rush Limbaugh.

(Note: This was written as a Writers Kickstart prompt on the topic Something Ugly with a Silver Lining.)