Curb Your Dog, Not Your Enthusiasm

Once upon a time in the 1980s, I had a canine companion named Ginger. Dog owners one and all walked their beloved pets in the street back then. In my Bronx neighborhood, it was the recognized law of the land—the way things worked. Nowadays on the very same topography, dogs are almost invariably walked on the sidewalk, which is understandable considering the increase in traffic, not to mention the quantity of, and the size of, the parked vehicles on the street.

Faithfully, I walked Ginger in the street, weaving, as I recall, in and out of parked cars. On certain days of the week and times of the day, I often found ample road without, believe it or not, an obstructive parked car. “Curb Your Dog” was the city’s clarion call to dog walkers back then. Posted signs told us as much. Our dogs should do their “business”—as my father dubbed it—in the street but never, ever on the sidewalk proper or in a tree patch. Before 1978, "curbing" one's dog was enough to comply with the letter of the law. So long as the business at hand was conducted off the curb and in the street, one was not required by law to pick it up and discard it in the trash.

As I remember in those simpler times, the streets, and a lot of other places, too, were strewn with canine feces. After all, if curbing your dog was enough, a heaping helping of droppings naturally languished in the streets that all of us crossed—until, of course, the street cleaners came along to whisk it all away. It was, however, a vicious cycle. Stepping in it was commonplace. So, despite having received a $100 ticket more than thirty years ago—an awful lot of money at the time—for not picking up after Ginger, I think it is a very good thing that contemporary dog owners are required by law to pick up after their four-legged friends, or suffer the financial consequences.

Recently, I discovered that the city fathers have been systematically taking down all “Clean Up After Your Dog” and their forebear “Curb Your Dog” signs. The rationale for this undertaking is to reduce the city’s excessive sign clutter. Anyway, shouldn’t every single New York City resident know by now that it’s his or her business to pick up his or her dog's business? The vast majority of dog walkers do know. And those who don’t know, I suspect, actually do know. They just don’t care, and posted signs importuning them to pick up their dogs’ crap probably isn’t going to make much of a difference. Despite the sidewalks being dog-walking central in the twenty-first century—and the "Curb Your Dog" mantra being a relic of the past—I say good riddance to those ubiquitous signs. I've already paid my dues: a $100 fine when, in fact, I actually curbed my dog.

(Photo 1 from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)