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I Caught My Dog’s Shit With My Hand

My dog is extremely regular. I walk him in the morning and he shits. I walk him at night and he shits again. If he does NOT shit on either of those walks, I come back home and announce the news with grave concern. “He didn’t poop! What if the poop got backed up in his system and it explodes out of his little doggie skull?” This has yet to happen to my dog, much less any dog, but I remain wary nonetheless. Mostly I don’t want him having to shit on the coffee table in a pinch (pun intended).

When the dog shits, he follows standard operating dog procedure. He eyes a patch of grass suitable for his business, then he does his about-to-shit walk, and I can tell he’s about to go because his little dog asshole begins … presenting. Then he squats and drops a steamer on the ground, then I dutifully pick it up with a bag wrapped around my hand. I pull the bag off my hand, turning it inside out. I tie up it up and HEY PRESTO! I got myself a little party favor.

One thing I noticed throughout all these walks is that the dog takes enough time shitting that I could, in theory, catch the shit with my bagged hand before it’s ever touched the ground. I ruminated on the idea. Toyed with it in my mind, not unlike my dog might chew on a squeaky plush mouse. I threw out the idea to Twitter. They were WILD about it.

With all that support behind me, how could I NOT brave an attempt? One night after the tweet in question, I was walking the dog again. I was alone, and stoned. No one else was around, save for the tech industry satellites that pollute Earth’s orbit to catch everyone masturbating. The dog went to squat, and I impulsively thought to myself LET’S GO FOR IT.

I reached out my bagged hand and PLOP! A fresh turd was all mine.

This was not a clean catch. Another piece of shit bounced off my hand and fell to the ground. I had not completed the process of catching the full movement. I went to grab the rogue turd while my dog, now finished, took two steps and kicked a bunch of loose grass at me. This is his instinctive way of burying his own evidence. It always fails. Now I had a fistful of dogshit and used fescue to my name, and not much more.

But no matter. I had done the impossible. Or, at least, the inadvisable. I had caught (part of) my dog’s shit in mid-air! Now when you think of The Catch, you won’t think of Dwight Clark. You’ll think of ME, America’s bravest loser.

I have not done it since then. You cannot chase such magic.