I was recently asked to write a post that addresses a vexing question: Why do some people go to the trouble of bagging their dog’s poop, and then leave that filled bag on the ground?
It’s a reasonable query, but also a delicate one. I don’t want to provide ammunition to the increasingly aggressive cat lobby, which has been pressuring Congress for years to pass legislation that would require all dogs residing in the United States to be deported to their breed’s country of origin (so long, German Shepherds, Siberian Huskies, and Irish Setters!). On the other hand, there is absolutely no justification for leaving your canine’s mess for somebody else to pick up. Mandatory prison sentences for offenders (the owners, not the dogs) should be considered.
What does scientific research on “poop-leaving” (the phrase used by scholars in the field) tell us? For one thing, we know that IQ tests indicate that Poop Leavers (PLs) are no less intelligent than the rest of the population, so there is little support for the Dim Bulb Hypothesis. Similarly, surveillance-video footage from around the country reveals that PLs are no more likely than non-PLs to break the Ten Commandments, undermining claims that poop-leaving is the product of fundamental moral deficiency. (It should be noted that a fringe group of Lutherans has long insisted that the admonition “Thou shalt not deposit dog poop in the street” was delivered to Moses as the 11th Commandment as he descended Mount Sinai with the original Ten. However, no record exists of Moses ever mentioning such an incident.)
So, it does not appear that PLs are distinctively stupid or evil. Could the answer be lurking in their family background? Perhaps.
PLs are about nine times more likely than non-PLs to have been raised in households where one of the parents abandoned the family when the PL was a child. In most cases, the AWOL parent didn’t even leave a note. Psychiatrists agree that such an event could easily traumatize impressionable youngsters, leading them to symbolically abandon their pet by not picking up its droppings.
“It’s Freud 101,” says Dr. Wendell Stith-Plandeau of the Cornell Medical Center. “The abandoned child is proclaiming, ‘now it’s the world’s turn to deal with my ____, just like I had to deal with Dad running off so many years ago’.”
Dr. Stith-Plandeau maintains that the appropriate societal response to poop-leaving is not prison or hefty fines, but psychotherapy. “PLs must confront the fact that they have been deeply wounded psychologically, and that depositing a bag of poop on the sidewalk won’t solve their problems. Mommy or Daddy is not coming back.”
This view of poop-leaving has not gone unchallenged. Researchers have found that PLs respond differently than non-PLs on word-association tests. When presented with the phrase “dog poop,” the three most frequent responses given by non-PLs are “gross,” “yuck,” and “disgusting.” In contrast, the answers most often provided by PLs are “granola,” “oatmeal,” and “string cheese.” At the very least, these results suggest that PLs do not see dog droppings as inherently negative. If that’s the case, they would experience little if any guilt when littering the sidewalk with said poop.
And the clues don’t stop there. PLs are five times more likely than non-PLs to have had hip-replacement surgery. This raises the possibility that PLs do what they do because it’s too painful to do otherwise. Bending over is not easy for them. Compassion, not judgment, is what we should be giving these folks. No one relishes the prospect of getting stuck in a crouched position for an extended period while staring at freshly deposited dog droppings.
Finally, there is the concept of object permanence. As babies cognitively develop, they arrive at a stage where they realize that an object continues to exist even if they can no longer see it. Some theorists maintain that the offspring of parents who smoked a lot of weed while raising their kids are at risk of never developing object permanence due to smoke inhalation. Consequently, these grown children now believe that once they walk away from a dog dropping, it ceases to exist. As far as they’re concerned, the problem has literally disappeared.
There you have it. A profile of the PL is beginning to emerge. Be on the lookout for dog-walkers with a cane sporting a Grateful Dead tee-shirt bearing the message, “Have you seen my Dad?”
And then watch where you step.
Mike Morris is a retired professor of psychology from the University of New Haven who moved to Framingham, MA in 2022. His primary avocations are satirical writing and pursuing street litter with a vengeance. His humor blog, University Life, can be accessed at https://universitylife.michaeladrianmorris.com.
