Random Wanderings and Wonderings
Where to go when you need to go.
The best thing about this sign tacked up to a post by one of my neighbours isn’t that it continues the local tradition of telling dogs where to go or that it’s bilingual (for French poodles, natch) or that it carries itself like an actual official notice. No, the best thing about this sign tacked up to a post by one of my neighbours is that it points to his neighbour’s driveway and away from his own garden. Release the hounds!
Markham sets down the rules about park befoulment.
Oh, Markham. I can’t even count the ways I love this sign. Start with the peculiar wording (“It is prohibited to allow”), work in an odd euphemism (“befoul”), continue with a parenthetical plea for cooperation, and wrap it up by citing a long-obsoleted by-law. And if that wasn’t enough, you top it all off with “Markham” written in that 3D typeface straight out of the ’80s. That’s a whole lot of awesome packed into a simple “stoop and scoop” sign.
Now this is a twist: in a world of property owners who admonish dogs for using their lawns as toilets, here’s someone encouraging dogs to pee on this stump. Mind you, maybe the motive isn’t entirely altruistic: the pee post is on a sidewalk boulevard on Cambridge Ave and far from any homeowner’s lawn. I smell misdirection. My money’s on this guy.
You’ve got to admire the homeowner who believes that non-poop-and-scoopers will be cured by a bit of passive-aggressive public humiliation. You’ve got to admire the homeowner who presents a wayward bag of poop to the perpetrator for removal. You’ve got to admire the homeowner who concludes his turd-removal directive with an anticipatory “thank you.” But most of all, you’ve got to admire a homeowner whose style, persistence, and faith in dog-walking humanity hasn’t changed in the three years since I first saw a bag of dog poop nailed to this fence:
So this is what it’s like to be an afterthought. I know that the folks at the Foodland in Millbrook mean well, supplying a bike rack at the store and all (“down back” is still fairly close to the door), but if dogs need a place to sit where they’re out of people’s way, why not provide a dog-specific hitch that doesn’t take space away from cyclists?
(And for the record, the bike rack was bereft of both bikes and dogs when I was at the store on Sunday morning.)