The Passive-Aggressive Poop Nazis, by Nils Parker

The ubiquity of dog parks in America’s towns and cities is a relatively recent phenomenon.  I grew up in a progressive, pet-friendly Northern California town of 75,000 and we didn’t get a dog park until 2002.  As a child and then as a teenager, when I wanted to take my dogs somewhere and let them roam free, I’d have to find a deserted baseball diamond or high school football field and then hope they didn’t run away.  Now, nearly every town of appreciable size boasts a fenced-in park dedicated – sometimes unofficially – to the simulated freedom of Man’s best friend.

The explosion of these parks across the country has been a boon of innovation.  Municipalities have put their collective liberty-squelching heads together to craft ordinances governing their usage and, more importantly, revenue-generating fines for when those ordinances are not obeyed.  In Los Angeles, you’re fucked if your dog isn’t licensed.  And God help you if you take Fido to the dog park after dusk because, you know, that’s when domesticated canines turn into property-damaging werewolf hellions.  Or something.

Companies that specialize in pet toys have also gotten into the act.  Many have developed fabulous new product lines dedicated to the growing dog park market.  The most recognizable of these is probably the Ball Launcher. This is the long, curved, hard-plastic, wand-shaped apparatus with a modified scoop on the end that allows soccer-loving, Europhilic pet owners to clutch a tennis ball and play long-distance fetch with their high-energy dogs without exposing the fact that when they try to throw the ball themselves they look like C3PO in a protocol droid slap fight to the death.

Along the way, dog parks and the complex culture they foment have brought together,a full panoply of insecure personalities that have not had the opportunity to find each other and congregate in one place since lunch hour in the high school cafeteria.  That is to say, dog parks have created an environment where older, immature personality types can show their new, adult faces.

My favorite is the Passive-Aggressive Poop Nazi.  The PAPN follows immediately behind his dog with a plastic bag until it squeezes out some soft-serve kibble.  Sometimes the PAPN gets their quick enough to catch the poop in mid-air.  It’s frighteningly conscientious.  Sanitation complete, he then spends the remainder of his time surveilling other dogs’ buttholes.  To the Passive-Aggressive Poop Nazi, dog poop is the enemy of Order and Stability.  Left unchecked, dog poop is liable to send the dog park into an irrecoverable death spiral toward a lawless doggy Thunderdome.  It is a concern of the highest magnitude.

The PAPN can be a man or a woman.  If she is…well…a she, she tends to be a disheveled, high-strung busybody with a similarly high-strung dog that never listens, despite screeching pleas to “COME!” or “STOP!”  or “BE QUIET!”  She spots you the second you come through the gate and doesn’t break her gaze until she’s sized you up.  Look at the way they just waltz in here not even watching where they’re walking, she thinks. I bet they don’t even have a bag with them!

Then she waits.

Eventually, she knows, your dog is going to drop into poop stance and unleash its fury.  When it comes, she watches your dog, staring at the rectal confection as it settles into the fresh grass between your dog’s back paws.  She turns to you, waiting for you to make your first move.  If you don’t dart immediately toward the poo, she peers deeper at both you and your dog, turning between the two of you with increasing sharpness and frequency.  If you exhibit even the slightest indifference to your dog’s poop, she becomes utterly transfixed.  Her dog could attack a baby or run into traffic; still, she would keep her focus on you with what can best be described as panicked intensity.

Why aren’t you picking up your dog’s mess?!  She worries to herself.  It’s been nearly 30 seconds. There could be no one within 100 feet of your dog.  There could be no one else in the park at all.  It doesn’t matter.  It needs to be picked up NOW! Someone could step in it! It could kill the grass!  There could be anarchy!

She can barely contain herself.  Someone has to say something.  Just not her.  She doesn’t want to.  That would be rude.  It’s much more polite to stare at strangers and silently judge them.

She begins to shake, like the tremors before a volcanic eruption. Her head clicks back and forth between you and your dog even faster, like a golf course sprinkler. Her face reddens and an intermittent tick develops,.  Here it comes.  She makes eye contact and takes a step in your direction.

“Excuse me! Excuse me!” she says. “Do you need a bag?”

Ahhh, the passive aggressiveness.   Do you need a bag? That’s the Passive Aggressive Poop Nazi Credo.

Thirty seconds earlier this woman was shivering with indignation.  She’d already decided to hate you, consigning you and your kind to one of the deeper circles of her personal Inferno along with SUV owners and people who don’t separate their recyclables. Your lazy indifference was a moral hazard and violated the sanctity of the Laws of the Dog Park.

Yet, ‘do you need a bag’ was all she could muster?

You know she holds you in the lowest esteem.  So why shouldn’t she be aggressive with her disdain and say something like “Hey, aren’t you going to pick up your dog’s fucking shit?!”  Or maybe she could try a direct and informational route: “Hey, your dog just took a crap. It’s over there.”  Leave it up to YOU to actively be a ne’er-do-well, so at least then she can justify being pissy.  Nope, that would make too much sense.  It’d be too confrontational.

The last time I dealt with a woman like this , she stared me down for a good five minutes, threw the “need a bag” line at me, and then nearly fell into a concrete run-off gully as she staggered away without another word, distracted by my utter lack of urgency.

My most recent run-in came just last week with a male PAPN at the park beneath the Hollywood sign that, for years, has been co-opted by dog owners and shared with Ultimate Frisbee-ers on the weekends.  It was noon and I was leaning against a picnic table in a warm patch of sun, reading Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell.  The PAPN, looking a lot like Dr. Claw, sat sunken into a bench in the shade, fiddling with his iPhone and absent-mindedly caressing his dog as it sat alertly in front of him.

Male PAPNs are slightly different, if no less obnoxious, than female PAPNs.  In my experience—and confirmed for the nth time by this most recent encounter—male PAPNs tend to be anti-social control freaks who sit by themselves, flanked by dogs they have trained to stay by their sides and do nothing unless commanded.  Often, I’ve noticed, their dogs are female. A delicious bit of irony when you consider, after having to actually deal with them, that those may very well be the only members of the opposite sex these guys have been able to keep around long enough to establish an emotional connection.

As I continued reading, my beagle Buckley wandered around as he normally does, his nose to the ground and his tail in the air.  A few minutes later, the shadowy figure emerged from under the trees that lined the east side of the park and stood with his arms folded 30 yards away.

“Do you need a bag?” I heard from across the grassy expanse.  I didn’t pay any attention to it.  For one, I was engaged in my book.  For two, I had no idea he was talking to me.  The PAPN repeated himself.  “Hey, do you need a bag?”  I looked up and made eye contact.  He was talking to me.  I found Buckley off to my left. He was wandering, sniffing around, just as he was when I last saw him.

“Nope,” I said, and went back to my book.  I shouldn’t have responded like that because I knew what he was getting at and I knew he wouldn’t let it go, but I had had enough.

My wife and I have had Buckley for two years and have been taking him to dog parks on a regular basis almost since the day we brought him home.  He’s licensed, fully vaccinated, unfailingly sweet, good with every kind of dog, and very regular on the 1s and 2s front.  We have a properly fitting collar for him as well as a leash with a sturdy clip.  We keep all our plastic bags and make sure there are extras in our cars as well as one on our person.  I’ve never not picked up Buckley’s poop at the park and have, in fact, picked up other dog’s poop when I’ve noticed it in the vicinity.  I’ve even broken up several dog fights with my bare hands (one involving a recently-rescued pit bull) while their negligent owners shrieked and screamed at one another. My wife and I are the consummate dog park patrons.

Yet here I stand again.  Another Passive Aggressive Poop Nazi breathing down my proverbial neck because I DARED to let my dog’s soft, steaming shit linger on the grass for more than a two-count AT A FUCKING DOG PARK.  Do any of these nosy, uptight, know-it-all, fecal vigilantes ever stop to think that maybe—JUST MAYBE—the reason people don’t immediately pick up their dogs’ poop is because they want to give it a chance to harden a little so they’re not smearing soft, warm dog shit all over the precious grass?!  Of course they don’t.  They’re incapable of conceptualizing of a world outside their own personal experience.

The most annoying part of this whole charade was that I knew this guy had been watching Buckley and me, and knew that I hadn’t actually seen Buckley take a dump.  In this situation, more than any other, the better approach definitely would have been to say, “Hey, your dog just took a crap. It’s over there.”  I mean, for fuck’s sake, HE SAW THAT I DIDN’T SEE MY DOG DO HIS BUSINESS!!  What was he expecting?  That his passive aggressive little bullshit plastic olive branch would spark in me the power of divinity and the bag would lead me to my dog’s poop?

Of course that’s not what he was expecting.  He wasn’t expecting anything.  He was just being a passive aggressive asshole who hates the fact that, GOD FORBID, not everyone behaves in the dog park the same way he does.  Well you know what? Fuck that.

“You probably should have one,” the PAPN continued.  He was not going to let me go, or soften his condescending, judgmental posture, until he was satisfied that I would be picking up Buckley’s poop post haste..

“I know. I’ve got one in my pocket. Thanks.”  I wasn’t going to bite.  I was going to force him into being direct if it took twenty minutes.  Fortunately, the anxiety that accompanies your typically wound-up control freak would never let it go that long.

“Good thing.  Because your dog just went to the bathroom right over there.”  The PAPN pointed to the spot with laser-like precision.  Yep, there it was.  All two little slimy turds of it. I looked at him, looked at the poop, looked at him again, and then returned his judgmental stare before responding.

“Why didn’t you just say that?”

He didn’t have an answer.  None of them ever do. Male or Female.  How could they?  They’re Passive-Aggressive Poop Nazis.  This is what they do.

The PAPN returned to his iPhone and his shade-covered bench while I leisurely strolled over to Buckley’s poop, scooped it up, and threw it away.  The rest of our time at the park was great. Buckley wiggled in the grass and chased a terrier of some kind.  I soaked in the sun and discovered that Mary Barton is the book where the saying “a watched pot never boils” comes from.  PAPNs would do well to take that advice to heart.  A watched pile of dog poop never gets picked up.  Like them, it just sits there steaming.