Yesterday I was trudging the 47-second commute from my office to my home and passed a father taking his two-year old son for a walk. On a leash.
Yes, the man was walking his child like a dog. The leash design was ingenious. It was actually a backpack/harness arrangement featuring a puppy as the backpack, with the leash coming from the puppy’s tail area. The kid seemed delighted with the arrangement as he strained against the leash. And the father had no worries about the kid darting into traffic for at least two good reasons:
1. The kid was on a leash.
2. There was no traffic.
In fact, we were the only people on the street. So in effect, the father had his son on a leash to protect him from me. I would take offense but it probably happens more often than I realize.
My first reaction to the kid on the leash is that it was humiliating and wrong. But the kid seemed happy enough. And so it made me wonder if the father is ever tempted to take it to the next level, i.e. walking the kid naked and picking up the turds with a plastic bag. That has got to be easier than changing a diaper. If it weren’t, dogs would wear diapers. I think that’s obvious. And once you’ve decided that humiliation isn’t an issue, all bets are off.
This reminds me of an excellent invention that I thought of the other day. I noticed that conscientious dog-owners spend half of their dog-walking time carrying bags of poop – presumably from their dogs. My idea is to make the dogs carry it. The invention would be like a harness for the dog with a tiny sultan’s carriage on his back. The bag-o-feces would go in the sultan’s carriage. The real money would be in selling the accessories, such as the little turban for the bag of poop. I’d call it the Turdbin ™. With this invention, people will no longer look upon the poop-toting dog-walker with a combination of pity and bemusement. People will think the dog-owner is resourceful and stylish. And that’s the best you can hope for when you’re transporting feces.