I'm the Neighborhood Weirdo

I was trying to find a picture of a dog pooping, but got distracted by this. You're welcome.

Yeah, I watch my dog poop. What? throws arms up in a menacing gangsta-esque gesture*

*pretty sure the term "gangsta-esque" just negated any menace, but whatever.

Yes. You read that correctly. I'm the one standing in my yard, in plain view of whoever happens to live in/drive through the area, watching intently as my pug drops deuce on the lawn.

Trust me, it's not because I get some sort of weird pleasure out of witnessing such a scenario; if I never saw the birth of those little brown logs again, it would be fine with me. No, I do it because it's kind of a necessity.

Our yard isn't fenced in. Therefore, every time our dogs Josie and Destiny (better known as "Puggy") need to do their bidness, we have to leash them up and walk them outside. If it's cold, if it's blistering hot, if it's 2 a.m., if there's four feet of snow on the ground, it doesn't matter: they need to go, so we have to take them.

Josie usually does her thing within a minute or two. Puggy, however, is more selective - and more easily distracted. She's all, sniff sniff sniff hey! a leaf! sniff sniff sniff hey! a car! sniff sniff sniff hey! a dog barking twelve miles away!

I don't understand why, when literally the whole lawn is your toilet, you'd be choosy about which particular patch you soil. But. Puggy insists upon sniffing each blade of grass, brushing the ground with her flat face, looking for the elusive "perfect spot." Then when she finally finds the spot, she turns in circles. Like, twenty times. And Lord help us if a car decides to drive by - or a person walk by - or a leaf or a piece of trash or a stiff wind blow by - during that time, because then she will start. The process. All. Over.

If she was just out there to do one thing, her pickiness would be more tolerable. But there's number one, and there's number two. And she always, without fail, does number two first - which means I have to wait for her  AGAIN to find the perfect spot for number one.

However, there's been an interesting turn of events lately. While I normally zone out and watch a bird or the creek or something, the other day I happened to glance down at Puggy and noticed that she was pooping and peeing simultaneously. I nearly did a happy dance: it meant that I wouldn't have to wait another twenty minutes for her to find another spot! I swear the heavens opened up and sent down beams of radiant light.

But, as with any other too-good-to-be-true development, there's a catch. In order to know whether I need to wait around or whether she's done after the first go-round, I have to actually watch her poop. And I don't know if you've ever seen a pug, but they're short, and it's hard to tell. So it's not like I can just casually peer down from where I'm standing. I actually have to crane my neck downward to get an adequate view, so it's very obvious what I'm doing (and unfortunately much less obvious WHY I'm doing it). What's worse is that she tends to move and/or turn while she's pooping - so I'm visibly following her around, eyes glued to the general region of my pug's butthole. In full, embarrassing view of whoever passes by. I'm sure they're like, "OMG, is that chick watching her dog poop? So gross."

I need a fence.

Or a taller dog.