
The Best of Times Short Story Competition
Autumn 2023 Results
Many writers have shared their thoughts with the public:
My Three Dog Poo Day
Copyright © Tracey Zielinski 2023In our household it’s an unwritten rule that it’s my husband who steps in dog poo. Bare feet, thongs, brand new leather shoes . . . it doesn’t matter how he’s shod, if there is a dog poo to be found, his feet will find it.
We were in Adelaide, staying in a lovely old place on the Esplanade at Glenelg. An old wooden upstairs flat with views out over the water, car parking underneath, more than enough space inside to swing several cats, and thick white carpet in the living room. He’d just bought new leather boots, in brown and black. He was wearing the black shoes as we came back home. In he walked, through the kitchen, through the living room. Opened up the shoe box with the brown pair, then pulled off one black boot. The poo stuck to the bottom of the boot saw its chance of freedom, flew off the boot, pirouetted in mid-air and landed, plonk, on one of the brown boots nestling innocently in their box. It had been baptised! Two pairs of boots with one poo? How awesome is that effort?
I giggled. Naughty of me I know, but I couldn’t help myself. Then, in unison, we both looked down, remembering the white carpet. There’s just so much regular splotches of dog poo add to the look of a carpet, particularly a white carpet. Who puts white carpet in a short-term rental place, anyway? I think that poo effort was his pièce de resistance.
My three dog poo day began with another cancellation. Two days ago I had eight clients booked in for today, now I was down to one. I’m a psychologist, so a client session covers an hour of my time. I don’t normally book so many people into one day, but I was due to take a week off the following week, so was fitting people in this week so they could hopefully survive without the benefit of my wisdom next week. In the past two days I’d had six cancellations all of whom wanted to reschedule for after my holiday. I was left with a 9am and a 4pm client. This morning the 9am contacted me early to say she wasn’t well.
Great! Not the best way to pay the rent when you’re running your own business. Still, at least I would now have the chance to get out and get some exercise. It was a warm day, so I opted for walking sandals to take my dogs to the dog park. The off-leash park means I can walk without the dogs pulling me hither and thither. They have a knack for heading off in opposite directions, then looping back to see what’s on the other side of me. I have visions of ending up wrapped up like an Egyptian Mummy if only the leashes were long enough. Control? Who says I don’t have control. When they’re off-leash they’re practically perfect!
We were half-way round the first circuit of the dog park when my phone rang. It was my mother. It wasn’t urgent, but it was important apparently. I continued to walk as I talked. Suddenly, I was stopped in my tracks by the sensations of oozing mud sliding under my foot. I looked down. Yuck! This must have been left by a Great Dane. It would fill a large bucket, surely. Not watching where I was going, I had landed squarely in the largest, gooiest dog poo I think I’d ever seen. So much for picking up after your pet, whoever you were!
The poo wrapped itself neatly around my sandal and wriggled its way onto and under my foot. Yes, I do realise I’m anthropomorphising the poo, but I swear it acted like a living entity. Psychologist’s oath!
I told my mother I’d call her back and hung up the phone. I shoved it in my pocket and pulled out a poo bag from my pocket. Gingerly, I extricated my foot from the stinking, oozing pile and did my best to wipe the bottom of the sandal on the grass to the side of the path. Then putting a poo bag over my hand, I took off the sandal, wiped my foot as best I could, then the sandal. The water tap was a good 400 metres away. I decided to take off both sandals and walk barefoot to the tap. Luckily poo washes off, although without soap, the smell lingers on.
That was poo number one for the day.
We didn’t have a long walk that day. I was, I confess, a little out of sorts and I don’t like l’eau de la merde de chien which is a fancy French way of saying dog poo perfume.
Washing up properly at home, I put on a clean pair of sandals and went shopping. Walking across the carpark at the local supermarket on the way back to my car, I felt a different texture as my foot came down on, you guessed it, another pile of dog poo. Seriously? In a supermarket carpark? No grass to wipe the sandal this time. Scraping it across the bitumen had a limited degree of effectiveness. Luckily, I had a spare poo bag still in my pocket. Just the right size for a pooey sandal. Driving barefoot is fine, but having the odour in the car with me was not what I was expecting.
That was the second dog poo, and the second set of sandals.
The third dog poo was courtesy of one of my dogs. I was walking to the bin to deposit the dog poo bag in which I’d brought my sandal home, when my thonged foot skidded on a hitherto unnoticed poo lying in wait on the way to the bin. Unfortunately, my foot continued to skid out from under me and down I went . . . straight onto the dog poo.
No, I didn’t cry. I felt like it, but I didn’t. I’m proud of myself for that. My white shorts and I were rinsed with the hose, then shorts then went into the washing machine while I went into a nicely scented bath.
I wasn’t surprised when my 4pm cancelled an hour later. I was relieved to be honest. I didn’t want to set foot outside for the rest of the day.
And that was my three dog poo day. Three different poos. Three different pairs of shoes. No witnesses apart from my wildly grinning dogs.
Still, in our household, one poo christening two pairs of boots is a Royal Flush compared with my Three of a Kind - three poos christening just one pair of shoes each. My husband’s title of The Poo-Meister is intact. He continues to reign supreme in the dog poo stakes.