Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Pee-mail

The streets of New York are a veritable nose-feast for a dog. Sidewalks, building corners, fire hydrants, and scaffolding supports offer up a big banquet of smells that only a dog could love.

City canine owners snap the leash on the dog's collar and head toward the park, hoping for a brisk walk or jog. But after a couple of hopeful strides - yank! - the dog has found a message from another dog, left cryptically next to the curb, and simply must smell what it has to say. Woe be to the leash-holder who is not prepared to be tugged left, right, left, left again, no right, ooh! what's up ahead?, right during Poochie's perambulation.

The other day some smug-ass wrote in to the paper to tell how he always brought bottled mineral water with him to wash down the curb/sidewalk when his dog took a pee. Another guy wrote in to say that not only was mineral-water-guy unbearable pretentious but that since Rover's pee is kind of like doggie-email, he was -in effect - deleting all of his dog's email responses to "messages" left along the way.

So I try to be patient with Bailey on our walks as she reads and responds to all her "pee-mail." I guess it replaces the "twilight bark" made famous in 101 Dalmations.

5 comments:

Joy Des Jardins said...

Hmmm, I wonder if that would work for humans. Don't think so since I'm not about to be smelling any toilet seats or sofa cushions anytime soon.

Liz Hinds said...

I love the way those dogs are laughing!

Elsie said...

Our yard must be the post office!

Anna said...

Our dog is so popular, she regularly gets pee-mail on the doorstep - she must be pretty hot, huh?

MaryB said...

Thing is, I bet the dogs find out more about the senders of pee-mails than we humans do from the senders of emails. Must be all in the nose.

Elsie - good one! Post office, ha!

Pee-mail on the doorstep, huh Anna? Hot, indeed!

Believe me, I had different rules when I lived in my house in Atlanta. It was OK for Bailey (or Zoe, or one of our other dogs) to pee/poo in the yard, but I wanted to shoot those careless owners who let their dogs use my front yard as "post office." But New York's a different animal ...