I mowed the lawn yesterday. After being out of town for a while it needed it. As you know yard work is not one of my favorite things. Neither is the heat and yesterday’s high was 99°F. With sky high humidity.

I know it is my tradition to do yard work in the hottest part of the day to compound my misery, usually just because the timing works out that way. But I’d been working down in Jacksonville, FL out in the heat for a few hours already in the afternoon so I decided to wait for it to cool off a touch.

Part of me was hoping I’d get rained out by one of the thunderstorms that seemed to be brewing off in the distance. No such luck.

So I went out into the heat of the evening about 7PM and got busy. I guess it must be too hot for the gnats because I didn’t notice them much.

Now for all my griping about doing yard work, our lawn is really pretty small. Our lot is measured in square feet, not in acres. We’ve got a side walk that runs along the street. And it is only about 21 steps to walk from the curb to the front door.

There are a lot of families with small kids in our neighborhood, which is one of the things that Gorgeous and I like about it. And most people are mindful of their pets. There are very few wandering about loose. The only regular is Mojo, but don’t blame her owners. She truly is an escape artist. And she’s so friendly and hyper that she’ll come running up to you when you call her and either piddle right at your feet or roll over on her back with her tail going a mile a minute. Sometimes she does both. But I digress.

Anyway as I got into cutting the grass (really just leveling the weeds) I noticed not one or two, but several piles of dog poop along the front edge of our lawn. Now for me it was not that big a deal. We don’t have kids that will be playing in it. I have a pair of old sneakers that I wear only for yard work, so it didn’t even bother me when I stepped in it. Those shoes never get past the garage anyway.

But I found it interesting that all of the piles were easily within a leash length of the side walk. And that means there was probably a person involved at the other end of the leash.

What do you suppose goes through the mind of that person when their dog is doing his business on someone’s lawn?

“Oh, I’m sure this home owner will be so happy that I am providing free fertilizer for this part of their lawn.”

Or maybe they are thinking, “Whew! Good job Fluffy. At least you didn’t go in our yard where I’d have to clean this up.”

Remember how close our house is to the street? How bold of the owner to let the dog go right in front of a bunch of windows that are so close.

Here are a couple of Proverbs about bold people:

1. The wicked put up a bold front, but the upright proceed with care.

2. The wicked run away when no one is chasing them, but the godly are as bold as lions.

At first that might seem like a contradiction. But I think the difference is in the timing.

The first one is talking about before the deed is done, or while it is actually in process. That is often the time when people who are doing things they know to be wrong tend to put up a strong front and try to bluster their way through should they be confronted.

The second Proverb is talking about after the fact when the conscious kicks in. Guilt is a tremendously powerful force. People who know they’ve done wrong are often in fear of being found out. They can even start to get jumpy at shadows. But folks with a clear conscious aren’t worried because there is nothing untoward to find out.

How does that relate to dog poop? Well I wonder how the conscious is treating those folks at the end of the leash.

Some times going ahead and dealing with something unpleasant straight away (like picking up your dog’s poop) is better and less unpleasant in the long run than dealing with the guilt of taking the shortcut of leaving it lie. The trouble is we often don’t see the end results of our decisions. We only see the unpleasantness that is right in our face.

And no I didn’t pick it up either. I figure a little free fertilizer just might be good for the lawn.

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