Cleaning Up Poop

I cleaned up the dog poop out of my mother-in-law's yard today. For reasons not entirely obvious to me she told me the other day she thought I probably had never cleaned up poop.

This is poop factory number 1. His name is Buddy.

That's kind of a misnomer because he is not much of a buddy to anyone including me.

He spends a lot of his time being afraid and hiding in his house.

Fearful dogs are the ones that will bite you in my experience. So he's a good dog to leave alone.

He will come over and want me to pet him if I am petting one of the other dogs. But that's pretty much the beginning and end of our friendship.



And this is poop factory number 2. His name is Wally.

He's kind of the opposite of Buddy. He loves people and he loves to be loved.

He also likes to chew stuff up including bushes that are growing in the ground and garden hoses and garden hose holders and wood cellar doors and things like that.

He also likes to play with Buddy by grabbing the latter's left rear leg and hanging on. Buddy doesn't seem to think it is fun as does Wally.

Wally also loves to chase cars although all he can do is chase them from the inside of his fenced yard. Before the fence though he chased one that hurt his leg and from which he has not totally recovered.

There is a third little poop factory that I have no photo of. He lives inside the house and is a Chihuahua. But he's big for his breed I guess. That's kind of funny although I didn't exactly mean it to come out that way.

These are the tools I used to clean up the poop.

I just got these not too long ago. This was their maiden voyage so to speak.

They are better than the old shovel and the rake. Or at least I think they are.

In case anyone is wondering they came from Pet Smart. Actually they came from Pet Smart whether anyone wonders or not.

Pet Smart had a selection of tools and I chose this set from among all those offered. They seem to work pretty well for me.

They do have a downside. Namely that someone has to actually use them to get the poop cleaned up.

I've washed them off here and have them ready to go into the old shop building. It's where the car stays. The old garage is currently for the lawnmowers.


I had this sack left over from feeding the horses that I used to contain the poop.

It's full.

For a minute there I wondered if I'd actually be able to pick up the sack and set it in the trash can.

But I managed it thanks very much.

Now you might think this sack would be more appropriate for the horse poop but I would need lots bigger tools and sacks for that purpose. So this one is for the dog poop.

There were some things I observed while cleaning up the dog poop.

For one thing I noticed that dogs apparently have favorite places to poop. I know this is true for humans but never had really thought about it for dogs.

Another thing I noticed is that it is a whole lot easier to clean up old, dried poop than new, fresh poop.

That made me think about other things and I decided there are a lot of things that are easier to clean up after they've aged and dried out some.

I wonder if that's true of the economic mess?