Tuesday, November 14, 2023

Of Morning Walks and Scooping Dog Residuals

(Editor's note:  What you should be seeing here this morning are more pictures of Dephi. Sadly, Blogger now fails to allow me to upload pictures either from Brave or Chrome.  No explanation really, just "Error" and that is that.  Your patience is appreciated; hopefully it will be resolved soon.)

Every morning Poppy The Brave and I go for a walk around our neighborhood.

The walks are not long - perhaps a little over a mile at the longest - and are not the sort of thing that one does for exercise, at least for me: the amount of sniffing and "whoofing" and peeing makes for much more of a meander (I have had to make peace with this.  If I want to do aerobic work, I have to come out after.).   And, of course, the inevitable "squatting".

Once upon a time, Poppy never used to use the facilities when we walked.  The first few times it happened, I was in a bit of shock.  I walked back home to get a bag, until I figure out that this was now a thing and started carrying one with me.  Even that has been an evolution:  first I brought a bag and and paper towel, then realized that people just used the bag to pick things up.  

(The bag issue has become a non-issue.  Every day I work at Produce (A)Isle, I find bags that individuals have pulled off and left to stand.  I just put them in my pants pocket and bring them home).

Every morning, one bag.  That is a lot of "waste" product, as it were.

Oddly enough in our world of "Use less, consume less", one never hears anything about the use of plastic bags - or even what we should be doing with the material itself.  If I sit and think about it for a bit, the amount that is generated between cats and dogs in the U.S. every day is likely a staggering number - a mountain of excrement, as it were.

And yet, not one word.

Leaving one's animals droppings on the sidewalk or lawn is considered poor sportsmanship, at least here in the suburbs.  One guides one's dog around the offending pile, harumphs a bit at someone that cannot follow basic etiquette, and continues on until the squat starts and one patiently waits, bag in hand (who trained who, precisely?).

I have read the occasional article or chapter about composting cat and dog droppings, but for various reasons it never seems to have caught on - which is fine, of course:  having been to places where they never seem to clean up their scat, I am grateful for the lack of odious aromas (And flies.  So many flies.).   It is probably indirectly the sign of a wealthy society where we do not consider such things as necessary for maintaining fertility of the soil (as well as avoiding parasites, of which I am not a fan).

But it does make me think, as I stand there waiting for Poppy to finish her business:  I am taking an organic, compostable, and recyclable material, putting it in a plastic bag (arguably recyclable, but will it be now?) and placing it in a trash can for disposal in a landfill.  Never once have I heard anyone suggest we should do anything else.

It does make me question:  are we truly dedicated to the sorts of things people claim about "Use less, recycle more" or just those things that we consider anathema to us?  After all, almost everyone loves dogs.  

Their leavings, not so much.

10 comments:

  1. When I was a youngster, mom had "THE LIST". I hated the list. All the chores I had to do to get paroled to play with my friends. Ugh: "pick up shupee", written in perfect penmanship cursive. We had a bull nose, D handle shovel, and I used a paper bag from Furr's Family Center. Those dogs spread their stuff far and wide. I remember once, dad digging a hole in the corner of the yard. About the size of a throw pillow. I thought he was gonna murder the dog and bury him, but we dumped the paper bag filled with offscour into it and covered it up. It was a relief, ha.... a pun.

    I learned that, depending on the phase of the moon, you could dig a hole and have too much dirt or not enough to fill the hole back up. After adding the dookie, the dirt filled up the hole just level. Dad explained it, but it's another curiosity that bugs me to this day.

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    1. Huh. What an interesting fact, STxAR.

      I want to say that Gene Logsdon in his book on composting addressed this issue. I should go and review.

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  2. I haven't been having any issues yet, but I'm not sure I've written a post in a week. Most of mine were written before that. But, I've heard that dragging and dropping pictures from your desktop into the blogger editor on Chrome still works, just not going through the menu options.

    I'm not sure I should express my opinions about pets. I don't make many friends that way. And I used to have a pet.

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    1. Ed, I ended up being able to do it from my phone. I did try the drag and drop option, with no good results.

      There are people that do not care for pets, either because of physical reasons (allergies) or personal preference, which fine. For myself, I have always found they add a certain richness to my existence not filled by people.

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  3. Hi TB! I scoop the poop, even out here in the country. I managed to find compostable poop bags and honestly, I just toss the contents into my woods in certain areas where I don't tread. Then the bag goes into the compost. That's the most efficient way I can think of taking care of that issue. When I had 5 dogs, it made a huge difference!!! On that note, I use wood chips for cat litter and those get tossed out into the woods as well to compost themselves into the soil.

    Kudos to you for "curbing" your Poppy! I never understood that word, curbing...makes no sense to me!

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    1. Hi Rain! Compostable bags make sense (although free bags make a lot more sense at the moment). I do use wooden pellets (like for horse stalls) for the rabbits and those end up in the back yard, slowly breaking down.

      "Curbing" is an odd word - now that you mention it, I have not heard it in years.

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  4. Nylon121:13 PM

    Seen one neighbor walk his pup on the street and pick up the result from the pup's production using a plastic bag and then walk up another neighbor's driveway and toss the bag into THAT neighbor's garbage can....uh huh. He couldn't walk 2 more blocks and drop that bag into a refuse can down on the lake path.

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    1. Nylon12 - Interestingly enough, I had a friend ask a question about that on The Book of Face. Turns out it is social taboo, if for no other reason than if you fail to tie the bag off tightly, the contents will "smear" on the inside of the neighbor's garbage can.

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  5. Hmm. First thing I had to do was go see if I could still upload photos from my computer. It's still an option. so hopefully. you just caught them in an upgrade mode.

    Besides plastic bags, I find it curious that of the world's carbon ills, no one ever mentions the manufacture and ubiquitous use of plastics for products and packaging (especially the layers and layers of packaging). The usual response is, "oh, I recycle them," which sounds good, but in fact the recycling process is energy intensive, not to mention transportation and a gradually degraded product.

    In regards to composting pet waste, I believe it has to be done under the same guidelines as human waste, which makes it a longer and more difficult process than ordinary compost. It does seem like a good idea, though.

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    1. Leigh, Produce (A)Isle - or more correctly, the Supermarket itself - has given me quite a view of packaging materials. We individually package so much that it boggles the mind - and to your point, I suspect no-one really wants chicken just pulled out and slapped into a sack. Even with our fruits and vegetables, they most likely come in cardboard - which means someone made the cardboard, transported the cardboard, used the cardboard - and then we denude the cardboard of its contents and put it into the crusher so it can be bundled and be returned for manufacturing.

      It seems like a lot of effort.

      From what I recall on composting pet waste, that strikes me as right as well. I do recall that the temperature has to be higher than regular compost to kill the pathogens.

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