CARLTON FLETCHER: Your neighbors yard is not your dogs toilet

Why don’t you mind your own business?

— Hank Williams

Hard though it may be to believe, I get frequent calls or I’m often stopped on the street by people who want to suggest a column idea.

If I had a nickel for every time someone’s said, “You ought to write a column about …” I’d have … well … a few nickels to add to my pocket change. (Which would about double my portfolio.)

One of the (few) people in Albany whose opinion I value — not that he’s necessarily smarter than everyone else, per se, just that I know when he says something I can believe it — stopped me the other day and pitched a column idea. It was not exactly a topic that’s a part of the ongoing gossip fests that take place daily at various popular restaurants about town, but the gentleman who pitched it certainly felt passionate about it.

Dog poo.

“I am (let’s just say ‘sick and tired’ and make things easier for the editors) of people who walk their dogs in my neighborhood and let them (I’ll go with ‘do their business,’ you’re welcome, Jim) in my yard,” the gentleman said. “I’ve got a corner lot, and it seems like all the dog walkers in the neighborhood have chosen my yard as their dog toilet.”

The more childish among us no doubt snicker at the thought of dog poo actually being a topic of semi-intelligent conversation, but the gentleman I talked with was in no mood to laugh. Especially after he had the displeasure of ruining a pair of perfectly good shoes by stepping in one of his neighbors’ more abundant gifts that he said “looked like a dinosaur had left it.”

Having lived in a couple of neighborhoods since moving to Albany after a lifetime spent in the serious country — where the whole world, by the way, is just one big toilet — I understood my friend’s grief. I find it one of the most amazingly brazen facts of city life that dog owners have no problem whatsoever allowing their animals to do their business in other people’s yards.

A lady who was walking her “baby” in one of my neighborhoods once led him off the street into my yard so he could do his thing about the time I stepped outside. She looked at me, at her dog … and said nothing, just looked at Precious as if to say, “OK, baby, go ahead and make Mommie proud.” I said, “Lady, I don’t want to spoil your walk or anything, but if you don’t get that dog out of my yard, I will.” (It was one of those little yip-yip dogs, so I wasn’t especially concerned about any threatened consequences.)

The lady stared for a moment, apparently unable to comprehend that someone would (a) dare to talk to her that way or (b) have any problem with her baby leaving his poo in their yard.

She said, “You are just so rude” as she picked Precious up in her arms, and I don’t mind admitting that I was pulling for him to complete his bathroom break on her nice white sweater. I mean, I’m rude? This woman had the audacity to encourage her mutt to use my yard — the place where I play with my kids — as a toilet, and I’m supposed to give her a pass because, I guess, her dog’s poo is somehow a good thing for my property?

My friend told me he’d thought about putting up a sign in his yard that said, “Here’s an idea: When you take your dog for a walk, let him run around for a while, long enough to (‘do his business’) in your yard. Then go for your walk.”

That doesn’t sound like an unreasonable request. In fact, the only thing unreasonable about this whole situation is that people are such lousy neighbors that they, first of all, encourage their pets to soil someone else’s yard, and then walk away without cleaning up after them.

Hint to you obviously clueless dog walkers: Even if your dog is your “baby” and you love him like a child and he’s this amazing creature and his poo is only slightly less wonderful than chocolate ice cream and blah, blah, blah, your neighbors do not care. What you and Precious do on your property is y’all’s business. They do care, though, when his business is left on their property. And when you don’t clean up after your animal, you are as low as the people who leave their children’s messy diapers in public places.

And that, folks, is about as low as it goes.

Email Carlton Fletcher at [email protected]. Follow @ABH_Fletcher on Twitter.