The other day I was leaving a store on Manhattan's Upper East Side, excited to be wearing the strappy new pair of sandals I'd just bought. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a woman taking her Pomeranian for its daily constitutional. The dog did its business by a tree planter on the pavement, leaving behind a small puddle of urine and two cherry-sized plops, or so I thought. The owner hadn't stooped to scoop and I swerved to avoid the fecal matter, but I failed to see a third turd as it rolled across my path. Next thing I knew - squelch! The inevitable happened, and the right sole of my Jimmy Choos was christened with poo.
When it comes to excrement, Paris has got nothing on New York. Ton for ton, I don't know exactly how much dog doo gets left on the pavement in these two cities, but the fact that Parisian streets and gutters are washed clean every morning helps mitigate the actions of that city's less responsible dog owners. The fact that New York recently upped its fine for failure to clean up after your pooch from $100 to $250 did nothing to help my designer shoe. Sure, Parks and Sanitation department officials are handing out a few more tickets, but there is no way they can keep up in a city with about a million dogs. That's a lot of shit.
And our streets are filthier for it. It seems as if no one curbs their dogs any more. Even when owners do pick up, they leave traces of poop and small rivers of piss in their wake. We're fast becoming an open-air toilet.
According to scientific studies, a single gram of dog waste can contain as many as 23 million bacteria and be host to diseases like salmonella. Maybe kids don't play in the streets on Park Avenue, but they jump rope and play soccer on the sidewalks of neighborhoods like Washington Heights, where enforcement of poop scoop laws is even more lax. These children are getting sick as they pick up the bacteria on their shoes, clothes and hands. There should be a special circle in hell reserved for these negligent dog owners -- right next to the sociopaths who spread disease by coughing up phlegm and spitting it onto the sidewalk, down the subway stairs and on the subway trains themselves. In Singapore, you'd get caned for less. It may be extreme punishment, but you could eat off those sidewalks.
I've got nothing against dogs. Far from it. Growing up in the suburbs, my family always had big, loveable pooches as pets and it never occurred to us not to clean up after them, even in the wide open fields where we took them for walks. But what is it with these obsessive New York dog lovers and their sense of entitlement? Why should it be okay for them to take their dogs into a clothing store, a supermarket or a drug store? Some of these dogs are big. Why should another customer have to feel intimidated? Business owners have to put signs up, because it doesn't even occur to the dog owners that it's inappropriate to bring their animal into an enclosed space where someone might suffer from an allergic reaction, or get bitten.
A few weeks ago, on the rooftop bar of the Peninsula, I saw a woman with one of those peanut dogs on her lap, feeding it from her plate. These people are worse than the overindulgent parents who think it's cool to let their toddlers run around a restaurant and scream at the top of their voices. (A rant for another occasion.) Do pet owners really think their "precious Precious" is so adorable we should feel privileged if we get to dine next to them, or step in their number twos?
But it's not the dogs that are the filthy animals. It's their inconsiderate owners.
Increasing fines won't help because, for the handful who do get a summons, thousands get away with these transgressions daily. This is a problem of rampant individualism and attitudes won't change without more drastic measures. In Germany, scientists are developing DNA testing for dog feces so that, through a dog licensing database, law enforcement can identify their miscreant owners. Sounds expensive, but a program like that would soon pay for itself with an exponential increase in collected fines.
Better yet, publish names on a daily "Shit List." And send the repeat offenders to Singapore.