A Note to Drew...

I read Drew Magary's "Funbag" every week on the Deadspin website. Magary is a brilliant writer, he's funny, he's a little profane, doesn't take himself seriously and he makes me laugh.

I had a question for him, here's what I sent.

Drew,

We're both dog people and you've mentioned dog shit a time or two. Here's my problem with my loyal. loveable German Shepherd, Anze. (he's named after Anze Kopitar of the Kings)

After a god damn lifetime of work, we finally bought a house in a canyon north of LA. It's nice up in the canyon and the house is beautiful, in the right light it looks like a painting by a French impressionist. We have an acre of land, 90 percent of  the acreage is "natural" which means I don't have to fuck with it and that brings me to my Anze the Dog problem.

Our property is fenced, Anze the Dog can't get out, so he can run around as he pleases. He goes out in the morning, does his recon mission, barks at a squirrel or two comes back and shits on the sidewalk.
He does it again in the evening. Just to piss me off he sometimes shits on the deck by the spa. This means I have to pick up his shit in a plastic bag and toss it in the garbage bin. I spent decades living in Boston's Back Bay and picked up dog shit at least twice a day for years. When we moved to the canyon, I thought, "I'll never pick up dog shit again." I was wrong, wrong, wrong.

On Friday mornings I haul our trash bins 100 yards down the driveway for pickup. Anze the (fucking) Dog comes along on the trash run, every Friday he takes a shit on the way down and another on the way back. One Friday he took three and he doesn't even bother to move off to the side, he let's loose in the middle of the road.

I love him but, he's just fucking with me, right?

Of course,my wife won't pick up dog shit, but she's more than happy to point it out.

I said, "What if I have a heart attack and end up in the hospital, you'll have to pick it up then!"

She laughed, "I'll just wait until you get out, you'll need the exercise anyway."

I cannot win.

Robert

P.S. Sometime I'll tell you about wearing my Patriots jacket to Costco during Super Bowl Week. That was an experience. It was even better a week later.