Personal Essay
My Puppy Just Ate Human Feces and It Reminded Me to Look At the Bright Side of Life
On grace, forgiveness, and overcoming negativity bias
My puppy, Mika, meandered off towards a tree after chasing me across the field. It was 7:30AM and the park was empty, save for a couple men hanging out or stretching ten feet away. Our patch of grass was cool, shaded by a building in the middle.
I squinted in the shaded morning light to scope out the tree. Our entire walk to the park, Mika had been tempted by chicken bones, remnants of a Big Mac, and rat carcasses strewn across the sidewalks. Running around the field had been nice because it was kept tidy by a private party, and I had already confirmed there was no detritus on the grass. The trees I was more suspicious of.
There was a green towel, about the size of a handkerchief, at the base of the tree, almost like it was hung across a root. I took note and kept the leash short enough to keep Mika away.
We passed the tree, and I glanced ahead at the sidewalk at the edge of the field, scoping out where I could park her to switch out her long leash (for playtime) for her short leash (for walking).
I heard her slurping.
I turned around. The root next to the towel glistened — with human feces. By the time I bucked horror and denial to pull Mika away, she’d already ate enough to make her tiny mouth reek of someone’s fresh diarrhea.
I put treats on the ground and told to “Leave it,” then “Okay take it,” hoping she’d chew some grass in the process to clean her teeth. But the lawn was nicely trimmed, the grass too short.
I didn’t want to get shit on my hands. This was a problem when I had been using treats to convince her “Let’s go!” and “Come on!” when walking.
Could I just strew treats on the ground and do the same “Leave it,” “Okay take it” combo on our way home? I thought of the chicken wing, the mayonnaise-slathered bite of a Big Mac bun, the shriveled patch of fur that used to be a rat. I wasn’t convinced I could be acute enough to leave treats on the ground sufficiently far from those unapproved treats in order to convince her to leave them alone.
After clipping her short leash on and staring in abject resignation at the crosswalk, I transferred both leashes I was holding to my right hand.
If I was gonna get shit on my hand, it might as well go on my non-dominant hand.
It was 7:30AM and I was still sloughing off sleep. As Sadhguru likes to say, anxiety is the obvious outcome of an untrained mind, and man, did I have some bad habits to unlearn.
Instinctively I started to blame myself. Why hadn’t I been more careful? Why hadn’t I kept the leash even shorter? Why hadn’t I been more suspicious of the tree? Why hadn’t I avoided it altogether when these type of things have happened before where I let my guard down to let her sniff and indulge her curiosity only to find a maggot-writhing baby bird carcass in her mouth the next second?
Then I stopped. I learned that lesson already, remember?
I had scoped out the tree. The shit was brown. It really, truly, was not visible from the angle at which we approached. The tree was like a lenticular painting.
The towel was a good hint for 5:30PM YJ cruising off her 3PM nap, her 4PM coffee, and a good lunch from hours before. 5:30PM YJ is sharp. She would have seen that towel and realized it was smeared, not just dirty, and hung over that root for the same reason we hang toilet paper rolls on tiny spears next to our toilets.
But it was 7:30 AM YJ on this walk, and she had scoped out every cubic square in front of Mika, successfully diverting the pup with kibble on a short leash when necessary.
I wanted to get mad the city and everyone else who lives in it. Why can’t people just throw stuff in one of the many garbage bins in our area? Where are the port-o-potties for the homeless people who have been spreading across the city since lockdown and quarantine?
That, of course, evades personal responsibility. We live in a society, and Mika and I specifically live in a city. Shit happens. I can vote and participate in town halls, but in the end, the only thing I can immediately control is myself.
I should have kept the leash short. I should have been more careful. I can admit this without being hard on myself, just logging it away as another lesson.
The best news of all? We’re scheduled for a vet visit this afternoon. We can mention the incident to our doctor and get any treatment we need for the incident on the spot.
We made it one block on our way home before it struck me that there were so many good things about the walk so far. Mika had been attentive and focused. She’s starting to sit unprompted every time we hit a red light at a crosswalk. I had been able to keep her away from unauthorized treats, but there really hadn’t been that many to begin with compared to some of our other walks.
The grass damp with dew. The gentle, steady wind was cool. Mika spent most of our time at the park curled at my feet chewing grass, and we’d chased each other around towards the end. Unlike the day before, my foot hadn’t fallen into a hidden, sodden ditch and she hadn’t rolled around in it, getting mud all over herself right after her biweekly bath.
My conclusion from this could not be “F*ck this and that I’m never going to the park again.” It had to be, it could only be, “That was a lovely walk.”
