My Little Non-Pooper

The thing about our dog is, you see, our dog only poops on grass. And this is not something we necessarily trained him to do, to poop only on grass. In fact, I don’t know why someone would actually train their dog to poop only on grass. Because if someone like that ever got stuck in a place where there is no grass, like say, a gigantic parking lot in Ukiah, California, and their dog really needed to go poop, that dog would hold that poop so tightly and with such astounding determination that two days later when he finally did go poop, a miniature crystallized replica of Mount Rushmore, all four sets of eyes, noses and ears intact, would tumble out of his ass.

So the other day Chuck and I stepped outside to do our morning duties — I say “our” because I really want Chuck to feel that I’m on his team, that we’re in this together, all for one poop and one poop for all — and there was a thin layer of melting snow masking the ground. And Chuck who has never seen snow was handling the whole spectacle with uncharacteristic calm, but he couldn’t figure out what the hell had happened to all the grass. He knew he had seen it there yesterday, it was there yesterday, he had pooped right over there on the grass yesterday, look over there, for crying out loud!

So I tried walking him back and forth in the snow thinking we might expose little patches of grass underneath our footprints. And little by little we created a perfectly acceptable pooping strip, a little rectangle of frozen but eminently recognizable grass. And we circled and circled, inching ever closer toward our deliverables, when I remembered that not only does Chuck refuse to poop anywhere but on grass, he refuses to poop anywhere but on dry grass, as in, grass that isn’t wet.

And you know, I wasn’t about to wait two days for a little caramelized head of George Washington to pop out his little tightened sphincter. We weren’t going to wait for the snow to melt and the grass to dry, or for the stars to align in a peaceful pooping arrangement. Our team was going to poop, right there, right in the middle of the non-grass, even if it meant that I get down on my knees, wrap my arms around his belly, and I’m embarrassed to even admit this, squeeze.

And all I can say is, I really hope that the grass dries soon.