Dear fellow dog owners: we have a problem.

Last weekend, my dog and I visited June Callwood Park by Fort York. It opened just last October in the middle of the brand new residential community. Thousands of people live here now and the park is their front and backyard. Callwood was a great Toronto writer and social justice advocate until her death in 2007. This is our memorial to her life and work and she was even consulted on the park’s design, wanting it to reflect her commitment to children and one of her mottos: “I believe in kindness.” The voiceprint of that phrase is even mapped into the landscape and can be seen from above.

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The park is pink and whimsical and currently covered in dozens of piles of dog poop.

It’s a scene repeated across the city and beyond. When the snow melts, even more will be revealed. Your delinquency has turned Toronto into turd city, a pigpen that lives up to our Hogtown nickname. It happens in condo and single-family home neighbourhoods alike. You turdmeisters don’t discriminate. Some of you curiously even bag it but leave it on the ground like a little gift, perhaps for the children June Callwood loved.

The dogs are the innocent parties here. More importantly, they don’t have opposable thumbs, but even they try to take care of their turds. You’ve seen them kicking the ground afterwards with their hind legs, dirt and grass flying everywhere. Non-dog owners misinterpret this as an act of aggression or vandalism — all strut and no citizenship — but the dogs are just trying to dispose of the poo the way they know how. It’s more effort than you’re putting in.

Those of us who are conscientious about cleaning up after our friends and not giving them a bad name in this crowded city sometimes go to great lengths to find the turds they’ve left. In the fall you’ll see us digging through piles of leaves, trying to find the now-camouflaged poo like golfers in the rough looking for brown balls.

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At night it’s easy to lose sight of the location of the big drop so we crouch down close to the ground using the light from our mobile phones to search for the piles. Sometimes, when we forget to bring bags we sheepishly ask to bum one from another dog walker the way teenagers ask for cigarettes. If nobody is around, we return with a bag later because the guilty feeling is too much. But you seem to feel none of this though you are literally leaving poop in our shared spaces, our public living room. What else do you get up to?

The term “dog owner” is for official purposes only, but you and I know these beasts are our friends. If you can’t stoop and scoop, you aren’t their friend. Friends help friends out and you’re embarrassing them.

When I’m out with my dog, I want to be a good citizen and pick up other dog turds but the great secret of animal companionship is that our own dog’s poop is special. It’s not really poop at all, it’s just a thing they do that we quietly take care of. Poop is what other dogs make, and when I see your dog’s poop, I don’t want to touch it. Sorry, it’s gross.

If you don’t think your dog’s poop is special then you shouldn’t have a dog. Get a cat, they poop in a box in your living room. I think you’d like that.

Shawn Micallef writes every Friday about where and how we live in the GTA. Wander the streets with him on Twitter @shawnmicallef

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