Living With Maurice

Here's a truly amazing observation about New York: I estimate that there are about 800,000 to one million dogs living in the city. This number is reached by figuring that roughly one person in ten has a dog (8 million people = 800,000 dogs). And yet there is virtually no dog shit on the streets. None!

And that is amazing. Hell, that's a miracle.

This was not, however, always the case. Way back when, dodging doo was a part of every New Yorker's day. But the pooper-scooper law (the living legacy of Mayor Koch) made not cleaning up after Rover a social faux pas. Today, every New Yorker walking a dog knows that the eyes of the citizenry are upon him. Fail to bathe for a month, root for the Red Sox, beat your wife, walk around with a Bush/Cheney button on your coat - hey, all right, these things can happen. But fail to clean up after your dog... you just try it, mister!

I actually think the level of civilization of the people of a city can be judged by this alone. Along with their pizza. Take Paris. I'm told that the streets there are a fecal minefield. And that there's no pizza.

All of which brings me to my latest taxi dog.

Maurice, a seven-month-old Boston Terrier, and Eric, his twenty-something owner, jumped in for a short ride from the East Village to Union Square recently. Maurice, like Julian the Maltese whom I wrote about in "Mail-Order Dog", is also a mail-order dog. Eric and his girlfriend found Maurice online and bought him from a breeder in Oklahoma. The price was $400 plus $100 shipping. The pooch was met at LaGuardia Airport, taken to his new home in the city by Eric and girlfriend and they've all been living happily ever after since.

Except for one thing. Although Eric described him as a good companion, he is walked three to four times every day, and he does use the wee-wee pad conscientiously, Maurice is still not completely housebroken. He may leave an occasional surprise in the apartment.

But never on the street!