Tonight, as I was allowing my dogs to walk me, we happened to take a route past a number of houses that have, in recent years, collectively invested in a rehab of the sidewalks outside of them. This four-block stretch of sidewalks is all done in new red brick, as opposed to the old, disintegrating red bricks outside of adjacent houses. Obviously proud of their investment, and hoping to keep it free of any indignity, the householders asked the bricklayers to include small stone plaques at the beginning and end of each block, which read, in Dutch, "Hond in de Goot."
Loosely translated, this means, "Dog in the gutter," clearly an instruction to our dogs friends inviting them to, rather than doing their business on these homeowners' spiffy new sidewalk, to...uh...take their business elsewhere. Such as the gutter alongside it. I've always had an intuitive feeling that these warnings were somehow lost on the dogs, who, after all, have not scored highly lately on any standardized reading tests. Tonight I had that intuition revealed as the self-delusion it was. The smarter of my two dogs, Paris, saw one of these plaques ahead on the sidewalk, slowed, squatted, and then deposited a truly formidable pile of dog waste *right on top of the plaque*. His aim was uncanny, covering every word of the warning. Fortunately for the householders on that block, I have never been able to overcome a habit I picked up in Paris (the city). Whenever I allow the dogs to walk me, I carry along a pocketful of plastic bags, perfect for scooping up Dog Offerings To The Gods and dispatching them to the nearest trash can. This may mess with the dogs' sense of religious ritual, but it makes for better neighbors. Still, I cannot help but applaud Paris' (the dog) sense of timing, and irony. He managed to poop on the one-foot-square parcel of land in our entire neighborhood that was telling him not to. My kinda dog.
