Tiny landmines and time machines: How to train your neighbor's dog

www.dogpoopsigns.com

I’ve got a crappy neighbor. She’s small, white, goes by the name Buffy. There’s an older man in her life.

                Now, there’s nothing wrong with any of that. Hell, it’s all true of Sarah Michelle Geller, and I wouldn’t care if she lived next door.

                The problem I have is that this neighbor has developed an irritating habit of crapping on my lawn.

                Here’s the situation: Our neighbor likes to let his dog Buffy walk around sans lease on his front lawn. So naturally, whenever she has to poop, she crosses over into my lawn and does her business right smack in the middle of it. Oh, and then she rips up a bunch of dirt and grass to try to bury it for good measure.  

And I don’t care if you’re a small fluffy dog named Buffy or even the lovely Sarah Michelle Geller herself, I don’t want you pooping on my lawn. I’m just old fashioned that way.

I don’t mind cleaning up the leavings of the animals who actually provide me with joy and companionship. That’s the tradeoff.

                But Buffy? She provides neither of those things so therefore I’m not all that interested in being her pooper scooper.

                Trouble is, Buffy’s owner is a thousand years old. In addition to predating America, the man is also as sweet as the day is long. So, saying anything to him about it kind of feels like giving George Washington a wet willy. 

 

                I mean, it’d be great if he walked over to our front lawn with a plastic bag and picked up after his dog or – even better – didn’t let his dog walk around out in front of his house without a lease on? Perhaps that’s less than ideal? Especially considering how far and how close to the street she likes to wander.

                Oh wait, that’s right. I forgot that dogs are immune to getting run over by cars. Hopefully one day science will figure a way to transfer some of that immunity over to people. And deer.

                The other weekend, I was picking up the fecal matter of a creature that provides me with no snuggling whatsoever, and running revenge scenarios through my mind.

                Somewhere in between my musings on stockpiling all of Buffy’s poop and then leaving on my neighbor’s porch and wondering how much it would cost to buy dozens of tiny landmines and plant them along our border, I hit on a massive revelation.

                But unfortunately, time machines haven’t been invented yet, so my plan to travel back in time and either turn my neighbor into a cat person or kill Buffy the dog’s mom, thereby preventing her birth, probably wouldn’t work.

                But then I hit on a second, more useful revelation: As far as crappy neighbors go, things could certainly be worse.

                Instead of a poop-happy dog, Buffy could be a terrifying gang-banger or a serial killer or even worse than all of those things: a loud teenager.

                Shudder.

                I’ve had some genuinely horrible neighbors in my day.

                Like the entire floor of drunken maniacs I lived with for an entire year in college. Or the neighbor I had when I still lived with my parents who very nearly had a nervous breakdown because one of my friends would park his car in front of the guy’s house for three hours, one day a week.

                Or the other neighbor I had in college who played this Good Charlotte song over and over again on repeat for literally an entire night.

                That night for me was like the scene from “Shawshank Redemption” where Morgan Freeman lays awake all night, haunted by whether Andy is going to kill himself. Only, I wasn’t concerned about suicide, I was worried that if I went to sleep, my ears would somehow detach themselves from my head and strike out on their own. And honestly, who would blame them considering the horrors they’d been subjected to?

                It was then that I realized maybe I should stop complaining about the free-pooping Buffy and the elderly man who thinks the whole world is her toilet.

                Hell, it would be lovely to live somewhere where at least one of my neighbors didn’t register on the douchebag Richter scale (also known as the Bieber Scale). But if that’s not in the cards, I’ll take cleaning up a couple of small dog shits a week over those other tortures.

                That Good Charlotte song, that’s intense. Jack Bauer wouldn’t go that far to get a terrorist henchman to talk, even if the fate of the country was on the line. There are some things you just don’t do.