Don't Shoot the Corgi

My corgis eat poop.

There, I’ve said it. It’s disgusting. It’s repulsive. It’s a foul, unpleasant, apparently natural habit that drives me absolutely bonkers. Going for a walk has become a battle, one in which I have to remain constantly vigilant and prepared to react at a moment’s notice. I live in a warzone, and there are landmines everywhere.

The unfortunate side effect of living in an apartment community is that although you never have to mow the lawn, you do have to share the outdoors with everyone else. We were surprised to have found an apartment community that was so refreshingly pet-friendly it actually charged a low pet fee and even featured a little fenced in, off-leash “Pet Park.” Not surprisingly, ever other pet lover in Jacksonville found it as well. While some residents, myself included, are diligent in picking up their pet’s waste, many others are blatant offenders. “Poop bag stations” are strategically located in all grassy areas and provide residents with bags and a disposal bin. I am constantly astounded by the volume of waste that I find littered in virtually all areas of the community. Some piles are enormous, and some sit defiantly less than two feet from a clean-up station! I marvel at the audacity of someone who would allow their dog to eliminate and then refuse to take two extra steps in order to pick up the mess. I have witnessed some residents whose apartment homes back up to the woods, simply open their door, release their dog to run out and defecate, and then casually call them back inside. While I am no means a prude, this kind of rule breaking is not only rude, lazy, and irresponsible; it is also unacceptable and dangerous. I won’t even go into the several incidents that involved loose dogs running up to my reactive, leashed, dogs.

Since I am currently not in a position to move out of the apartment community, although though this is my ultimate goal, I must find ways to live within the parameters of my environment. Unfortunately this is not a new problem, as I have walked in many neighborhoods and front yards around town that are also plagued with poop. This is not a simple problem either, as my corgis seek out feces with the kind of tenacity exhibited by contestants on a game show trying to win large sums of cash. They are like pigs rooting for truffles, or a bloodhound on the trail of a murderer. Once they have picked up the scent of a precious nugget, they will pursue it with unparalleled determination.

Because I find this behavior to be not only disgusting, but also dangerous, as they could become sick from eating excrement, I have engaged in a number of different tactics to address the problem. Karen Pryor, in her incredibly insightful book, “Don’t Shoot the Dog,” outlines the essential eight methods for eliminating undesirable behavior.

Method 1: “Shoot the Animal” Despite the degree to which their behavior annoys me, this would be decidedly drastic, and I have yet to resort to this method. Yet.

Along these same lines, she describes physically preventing the animal from exhibiting the behavior. At a certain level of frustration, I resorted to purchasing muzzles. At first, this resulted in the most dramatic displays of flipping and rolling as they tried to remove the affronting devices. When this was not successful, I was given the most pathetic looks of indignation you could ever imagine. The way they looked at me, you would think that I had never done a single nice thing to them in their entire lives. Hating to feel that I was emotionally abusing them, I abandoned this strategy fairly quickly.

Method 2: “Punishment” Only when at my most frustrated and least patient have I resorted to this method and the resulting guilt is enough of a punishment for me to avoid employing this tactic very often. Besides, it doesn’t work. Apparently kicking your corgi in the butt will not discourage it from gulping down the treasure it has found. In fact, punishment will only increase the speed of consumption, as the corgi tries desperately to gulp down its prize before being yanked away by its leash.

Method 3: “Negative Reinforcement” I tried this tactic years ago by filling a metal can with pennies and bringing it on our walk. Each time a corgi would attempt to lunge at a mound, I would either violently shake or throw the loud and scary can down on the ground near them. What happened as a result was that Kirby simply refused to walk. I would attach his leash, pick up the can, and he would immediately put on the brakes and refuse to budge. While this was essentially effective in eliminating the poop eating behavior, it also eliminated the walking behavior. Method 3 was therefore a failure.

Method 4: “Extinction” When you do not give attention to a behavior, it will disappear. Ha. Can anyone tell me why this wouldn’t work? Somehow, although I’ve used denial to cope with the problem myself, ignoring the poop eating will not make it go away. They don’t do it for attention; they do it because they think poo is delicious.

Method 5: “Train an incompatible behavior” This one is feasible, although difficult, as my corgis completely lose the ability for rational thought in the presence of food, and poop, since it was formerly food. In order to capture non-poop-eating behavior, I was forced to carry a massive number of highly valuable treats in an effort to reward behaviors that didn’t involve eating poop. Our walks consisted of taking one step, tripping over the two small dogs that are dancing and twirling while trying to solicit the treats from me, getting up, and attempting to take another step. They didn’t eat poop, because they were too busy to look for it, but they also didn’t walk, and couldn’t go to the bathroom themselves for fear they would miss out on a treat. This was a counterproductive endeavor.

Method 6: “Put the behavior on cue” The methodology here suggests that if you put an undesirable behavior on cue, reward it, and then cease to ever give the cue, the animal will discontinue the behavior due to lack of reinforcement. Well, this would be the easiest trick I could ever teach them. Unfortunately, they would engage in the behavior in spite of me never giving the cue again. It is again a matter of crap= awesome and delicious corgi delicacy.

Method 7: “Shape the absence” My corgis work for food. It is their only true motivation. Their entire reason for existence is to eat, and to eat as much as possible. As I mentioned before, I have attempted to bring treats on walks (this time hidden in my pocket) in order to reward poo-avoidance behaviors. Unfortunately, since they view fecal matter to be the highest form of culinary delight, no treat imaginable is worth more to them. The food I whip out of my pocket in an attempt to lure them away is no match for the value of the magical treats they find littered on the ground for free.

Method 8: “Change the motivation” The theory here is that when your animal, or child, or spouse, is engaging in an undesirable behavior, it means they are deficient in some basic need. When that need is met, it should help alleviate the problem behavior. For instance, if your children throw temper tantrums in the grocery store because they are hungry, feed them a full meal beforehand. Without hunger driving the bad behavior, the temper tantrums will disappear. Sadly, if I fed my corgis as much as they desired to no longer be hungry, I would have two fat little walking ottomans with heart disease and diabetes; if they could still walk at all, or breathe for that matter.

So there we are, eight methods later, and still no solution. But perhaps I am looking at this wrong. The underlying problem in all of this is not just the corgis’ behavior, but the negligent attitudes of my neighbors. Perhaps I should target THEIR behavior. Is there a book called “Don’t Shoot Your Neighbors”?