Homeownership is a lot of work. This is no surprise. I knew that as soon as I finished signing that towering pile of papers that every small problem would be my responsibility. I just never figured one of those problems would be a dog from the trailer park shitting in my front lawn.
As a renter, a person could come and squat out their morning coffee on the side of the house and I would’ve cheered him on.
“Did you get it all?” I’d say, handing him a roll of toilet paper.
In fact, being a renter affords you the ability to shrug off anything less that a catastrophic fire. Broken water heater? Shattered window? Collapsing foundation? As long as the drywall doesn’t have any holes and you can get your security deposit back when you move onto the next property to ruin, structural damage means nothing.
But that all changed when I signed myself up for 30 years of overwhelming debt. As a homeowner, every creak makes me pause like a squirrel hearing a car door close — terrified of the implications and expecting nothing but the worst. This fear, which is often misinterpreted as pride, also comes with a fervent protectiveness. Every car passing by too fast or even a pedestrian walking suspiciously slow causes me to press my face against the window, narrow my eyes, and whisper:
“What the fuck was that?”
I’ve sunk every theoretical dollar I’ll make for the next few decades into this place and I’ll fistfight a tornado to make sure it doesn’t fall over.
This protectiveness covers all areas of the property. All cardinal directions are under my ever-watchful eye. I couldn’t care less if a piece of the space station falls onto the children’s play set ten feet past my southern fence, but I’ll be damned if I let a stray empty bag of Funyuns get caught in the weeds I call a lawn.
And this is why I find myself, for the second time in my life, hating a dog.
Before we go any further, I want this to be known — I love dogs. Every one of them. I watch videos of dogs while I should be paying attention to movies. I smile at every dog that comes within screaming distance of me. And I have two dogs sleeping on either side of me as I write this. So imagine the lengths to which I must be pushed to turn on something I treasure so deeply.
The first dog lived next to an apartment of mine in college. The owners were probably in their late fifties and sold drugs to people that looked like they’d hold you at knifepoint for a bus pass. They kept the dog tied up to the garage behind their house about 98% of the time. And while the dog was back there, he barked. This meant every time I tried to do homework in a quiet apartment, each breath was punctuated by incessant barking.
It quickly grew old.
Now, this is the result of terrible dog owners. The dog simply wanted to go inside. It just wanted love. Instead, it was tied to a garage in the middle of the harsh Milwaukee winter. But even if you feel bad for something, having it scream in your ear for six months straight can lead to thoughts of hamburger filled with anti-freeze. It’s like Chinese water torture, but instead of small drips of water compounding until they feel like bricks, it’s a short yip of a lonely dog becoming a nail gun firing into your temples. It needed to be stopped no matter what the cost.
And this dog shitting in my lawn is the same deal. He lives in the trailer park down the street. He has free reign of the neighborhood because his owners are most likely neglectful assholes. People in this city leave their dogs outside more than any other city I’ve lived in but at least they usually keep them tied up or fenced in.
It’s weird to hate something and feel bad for it at the same time, but here we are. The dog itself seems nice, but I can’t accept the multiple piles of dog shit in my front lawn. Mowing it is going to be closer to using a manure spreader at a farm. The protective feelings driven by a mountain of debt seem to be overtaking my love of animals. So if you need evidence that money is the strongest motivator in a capitalist society and ultimately corrupts, there you go.
I don’t know why the dog has chosen my lawn out of the 20 or so between the trailer park and here. Maybe I should feel special that I won the dog shit lottery, but the prize isn’t exactly something on my wish list.
Just like the dog in college, of course I’m not going to harm this mid-sized, black and white shit terrorist. Any yelp of pain would be a knife into my dead soul.
Imagined revenge is going to have to fill the chasm of anger until I finally get around to putting a fence around the yard. If he still comes inside after that, maybe I’ll just start feeding him until we form a bond. Then I could train him to go back to wherever he’s currently staying and eat all the pants in the house and slash their tires on his way out.
Plus, becoming his friend would mean picking up his shit wouldn’t be an undeserved chore but a required act of love.
