How A Dad & Daughter Bonded Over...Rotting Dog Poo

Kids See The Darndest Things

"Look Daddy, someone threw their dog poop into the tree!" My always observant daughter noticed something I never would, on our walk to the bus stop for her first day of grade 4.

Sure enough, someone had taken the time to scoop their four-legged friends' waste, but had not taken it with them, tossing it instead, around the branch of a tree on the side of our street.

"Sometimes hun, people hang their dog poo bags in trees so they remember to get them when they come back this way. They don't want to carry poop for the whole walk." It was my best attempt to explain a very random observation. And it's true. Dog owners have told me as much.

I never would have guessed in a million years how this hanging bag of doggy do-do would become such a source of laughs, excitement, bets, and bonding over the next two years. My daughter was 9 when she first spotted someone's act of laziness, but she would be 11 on the sad day our fun ended.

Miracle Bag

At the end of my daughter's first week of grade 4, the bag of dog poop was long forgotten. She was excited for the first weekend of the school year.

However, come Monday morning and the walk to the bus stop, she giggled with glee and loudly announced "The bag of poop is still there!" As time went on, both her & I's disbelief over the bag of poop's skills of survival continued to grow.

Every Monday we would cackle with laughter that it survived another weekend. During storms that Fall and Winter, she would ask, wide-eyed at bedtime, "Do you think the poop bag is still there Daddy?" And the next morning, it would be.

It survived blizzards, rain storms, wind storms, and even made it through the recent ice storm that downed so many trees in Simcoe County. This truly was a miraculous bag of dog poop.

Bets & Chores

Sometimes we would go days without mentioning the bag and other times we would seek it out through the lush greenery of Spring, on the walks to the school bus.

During Christmas vacation, March break, and Summer, instances of regularly spotting the bag of poop became few and far between. But on the odd bike ride, or drive home from an outing, we would turn the corner and we would giggle when seeing it. Mom never understood why it entertained us so much.

My daughter liked to ask for treats, like most kids do. And we wanted her to do more chores, as most parents do. So, it became a common bargaining chip for us to say "if the poop bag lasts another week, you can go to the movies" or "if the poop bag is still there at the first of the month, you have to feed the cats and clean the basement."

You could say that it was a secondary miracle that the poop bag became a part of productivity and rewards in our house. And that my daughter never seemed too upset to lose, or have to work, due to the poop bag's survival.

End Of An ERa

My daughter got through grade 4 and all of grade 5. She's nearing the completion of her sixth grade school year and has grown a lot since she was 9.

A random walk to the bus stop last week, while talking about boys or talking about drama with friends, my daughter trailed off mid sentence and her face went pale. She looked like she saw a ghost and I feared she was choking or witnessed an accident behind me on the street over.

"Da...Daddy..." she stuttered. "It's gone!" I knew immediately what she meant and for a split second I hoped she was trying to prank me. But when I slowly turned around, I saw that indeed, the poop bag had finally fallen off the branch of the tree. There it lay, obscured by grass, at the foot of the same tree.

"Oh no!" I groaned. An exasperated laugh followed, before I exchanged looks with my daughter, both of us with nervous smiles on our faces. But even though the bag of dog poop gave us one last laugh, there was something sad in the moment and we hugged, knowing the fun was over.

Is it silly to have to share an embrace, mourning the loss of a rotting bag of dog droppings? Perhaps, but it had become much more than that. It became a symbol of consistency. It was a shared inside-joke between Daddy & daughter. A sign that all was right with the world, and miracles do happen, even the tiniest ones.