Dogs – Gotta love ’em (or do we?)

shhhh.jpgI live in Woodcroft subdivision in Durham, NC. This little blurb appears at the bottom of a long page in the Homeowners Association Web site’s “Neighborhood News” section.

PET PEEVES
Dog owners please remember the walking trails are often located very close to your neighbors yards and are used extensively by non-pet owners as well. Please take a plastic bag and clean up any “accidents” that your pet may leave along the trail. The same consideration is appreciated in all of the common areas, traffic circles etc. Thank you in advance for being a considerate Woodcroft neighbor!”

Well, let’s just say that if anybody actually sees the blurb, not many abide by it. It’s a shame, too. This great neighborhood is made less appealing by the large amount of dog waste scattered everywhere. I mean, you can smell it driving through the subdivision. It just brings up the issue of why people have so many dogs anyway, and once they have them, why they don’t keep in mind the effect of their dogs on other people.
Haven’t people have gone sort of ’round the bend where their dogs are concerned? They surely seem to have trouble understanding that everybody else doesn’t feel the same way on the matter. For lack of a better word, there is even a bigotry among them, a feeling that people who differ with them on this point must have something “terribly, terribly wrong” with them.

It’s just not so, though. Just because I don’t happen to need the automatic validation and unconditional love of a canine companion, hey, that doesn’t mean there something wrong with me. It could, instead, be indicative of a well integrated ego, a less needy personality.

And let’s just say it straight out: These inconsiderate dog owners are doing nothing more than taking their problem and making it my problem. How can I see that as cool?

The thing that is really bothersome about this, especially in my neighborhood, is that it would be so easy for them to show that small degree of consideration that would make life better for everyone. Most of these walking trails are situated such that an expanse of untraveled road shoulder is right across the street from them. The people could take 20 steps and keep their problem from becoming my problem.

So, really considerate people would say, “Gosh the population density is kind of high here. Maybe I shouldn’t get that brace of doughty Rottweilers after all.” Failing that, the less considerate people could say, “Well, it was my choice to get the dog(s). Maybe I should clean up after it (them) so that it doesn’t become a quality-of-life issue for everybody.”

I think you can see the trend here. The ones that allow their dogs to leave their “steaming heaps” right next to the walkways, and do it day after day in the same locations, are at best really deluding themselves. At worst, they are sticking their thumbs in the eyes of everyone unlucky enough to share space with them.

Pretty spoiled behavior, huh? Not cool at all.

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