Forget ferrets. New York City should ban dogs - and their poop

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/11/forget-ferrets-new-york-ban-poop-dogs

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New York City’s Board of Health voted not to overturn the decades-long ban on owning ferrets as pets on Tuesday, which is a travesty of justice for a number of reasons. Clever, friendly and useful in controlling vermin, ferrets (Mustela putorius furo) have been domesticated for more than 2,500 years, and their illegal status fosters the kind of black-market trade that led to the destruction of the New Yorker fact-checking department in Bright Lights, Big City. More importantly, former mayor and current national embarrassment Rudy Giuliani famously hates ferrets and the humans that love them, and everything that Rudy Giuliani believes is wrong.

What bothers me the most, though, is that the government is misdirecting its efforts. There is a type of animal that people should not be allowed to own as pets in New York City: dogs.

I know many people love dogs very much, but I have the interests the city’s collective citizenry in mind. Have you seen the sidewalks this week?

They are disgusting. Vomitous. At their absolute worst. As February’s record snowfall finally melts into black slushy dirt, the amount of dog poop left in its wake is breathtaking. You saw the pictures from Boston this winter, in which people were walking around in roofless tunnels carved out of snow? That’s what the sidewalks are like here this week, except the walls of snow have been replaced by dog poop. We are trapped in a giant labyrinth of dog poop.

Outside my window right now, scattered on a patch of the last remaining ice in front of my building – not two meters square – are three enormous piles of dog poop, just thawing.

Why does this happen? Why must we live like this? It’s because dog owners are selfish, irresponsible people. Not all dog owners, to be sure, and I’m sorry if you happen to be one of the good guys, a dog owner who takes the social contract seriously, and dutifully picks up your dog’s poop from the sidewalk (How you do this without fainting? Why you would choose to debase yourself in this way?) even in inclement weather. But the evidence is plain, right there in various shades of stomach-turning brown: there are more than enough bad apples here in the Big Apple to spoil your bunch. It’s not fair to you. But you know who it’s even less fair to? Those of us who don’t choose to have dogs.

It’s not that I hate dogs. Dogs are fine (as long as they don’t jump up on you or try to lick you or, really, touch you at all). But the city is not the place for them. It’s simply too small and too congested; there’s not enough room here for dogs to run and bark and poop, to do all things that dogs like to do, all the things that dogs should be able to do, outside, near their homes, without infringing on the rights of the humans who have to share the streets with their owners. (Is “rights” too big a word here? No. People have a right to walkways free of fecal matter. It is part of the pursuit of happiness.)

I’m sure the dogs don’t like it either. Could there be a single dog living in the city who wouldn’t be happier out in the greener, grassier, far-less-paved country? Or even the suburbs – the godforsaken suburbs – even with those tacky, swollen Toll Brothers McMansions swallowing up all that yard space, there’s plenty of room out there for dogs to run free. There are big houses with mud rooms and doggy-doors, so our canine friends can come and go as they please, chasing squirrels, off the leash, pooping as they will on some nice discreet patch of their own owner’s lawn. Pavement’s gotta hurt a dog’s paws, even when it’s not strewn with that horrible-chemical road salt, don’t you think? And I know for a fact that dogs don’t like to be tied up to lampposts when their owners go shopping in delis.

So for the sake of us all – humans, dogs, any and all of God’s creatures lucky or unlucky enough to set foot on the streets of the city – I beseech the Board of Health, or another department of the municipal government (it doesn’t matter which one), please, draft some legislation banning this scourge of civilized urban living. Please, ban dogs.

Oh: not all dogs, I guess. Blind people should be allowed to keep their seeing-eye dogs. Seeing-eye dogs are important enough to warrant exemption. But none of this “emotional support animal” stuff. If a New Yorker needs the emotional support of a pet, let them get a nice, cuddly, quiet ferret. They poop inside, like cats.