September 15, 2004
Dude, lighten up.
So I'm walking my dog this morning, and as I'm walking past an apartment building, a guy pulls up in a pickup truck to go into the building office. But when he gets out, the grumpy old man starts yelling at me. It seems that I should be keeping my dog in my yard, as "this is an office, and people are coming and going through this area". Buh? I think Nutmeg peed in the grass there, although I wasn't really paying close attention; he certainly hadn't left any presents there (and I would have cleaned that up anyway). I responded in a somewhat befuddled manner that he'd only peed, and the guy said, "yeah, but people still have to walk through it!" Then he made a loud noise of disgust and stomped off into the building.
Bizarre. I mean I'm not going to be losing any sleep over this, but I just had to share.
"It's true! He totally is! In a roundabout way, he reminds me of Chris
Rock's stand up routine where he says that people have two options: good
relationship and boring, or bad relationship and exciting.... Alan
Keyes is the GOP's bad boyfriend." --Leigh Anne Wilson
Posted
by blahedo
at 10:16am
on 15 Sep 2004
Actually, the dude was a jerk, but the jerk was right. Dog pee is not good for other people's lawns, even in doses that the individual dog owner tends to consider negligible. The World's Smartest Human (tm) has spoken on this subject:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_072.html
Besides the damage to the vegetation, many people just have a high "eeeeeww" quotient about the notion of walking on grass that has at some point had dog pee on it. Admittedly, dog owners don't have complete control over where their pets take a whiz, but they should make a good-faith effort to discourage them from doing so on private property, or at least act apologetic if caught.
I don't buy it, Cecil's post notwithstanding. There are enough rabbits, stray cats, and especially squirrels (o god the squirrels) around here that Nutmeg's contribution is unlikely to matter, either in terms of nitrogen or "ewww". The claim is made, but not supported, that one dose will make noticeable marks, but this is demonstrably false. (Repeated use has made a mark just as described, but that's in the backyard.) Moreover, through instinct or telepathy, Nutmeg has learned to leave his mark only on the parkway side of the sidewalk, so even if it *were* a problem, it's at least restricted to city property.
