Buenos Aires Dog Shit

I apologize in advance if I offend anyone that calls Buenos Aires home, but I just have to get this off my chest…

….what is up with all of the Dog Shit on the sidewalks!?

I mean, we are not talking about a few poops here and there, we are talking about huge amounts of dog crap on every sidewalk we have seen in this city.  Big ones and little ones and brown ones and black ones and hard ones and soft ones….and the list goes on in perpetuity.

Buenos Aires is known as the home of the Tango – but I personally think that it should be considered also for the Dog Poop Capital of the World as well…and I am very confident that it will not have any competition.

We have spent our first week in the city getting the lay of the land; figuring out the transportation system, visiting the horse track, taking the subway downtown, and finding all of the local stores we will need for our stay here.  But for the life of me I can’t tell you what the place looks like because I am too busy with my head down trying to avoid stepping in all of the doggie bombs littering the sidewalks.

We walked out of the apartment building early this morning and saw a “dog walker” with a half dozen or more canines walking down the street.  One of the animals was taking a poop in the middle of the street and as I looked further up the street I could see from whence the dog walker had come because there was a parade of steamy doggie treats up the street and around the corner.  One might recollect the story of Hansel and Gretel…
Where do all of the dog crap come from you might ask?  Well the answer is quite simply that people love their dogs in this city and have lots of them.

For those that have spent any time traveling in Latin America you get used to seeing “wild” dogs roaming the streets in most cities – these are street dogs that do not belong to anyone.  Here in Buenos Aires however, the animals responsible for the sidewalk defecation are not “wild” street animals…no, they all belong to someone living in the city.
Open the door of the apartment, let the dog outside, watch him/her do their business on the city sidewalks, and back inside they go.

Nobody picks up their dogs’ doodie!

Every morning In Cotacachi, Ecuador the Street Sweeper would come by and pick up the dog poop left by the street dogs the day before along with other rubbish.  They did an amazing job of keeping the streets clean even with a large population of stray animals to contend with.  We have seen Street Sweepers come by occasionally here in Palermo, Buenos Aires – but they do not appear to pick up much of anything let alone the city’s poop.

To say I am confused is an understatement.  I can’t be the only one that notices that the city streets are littered with puppy poop, that it is almost impossible to walk down the sidewalk and not step in canine crap, but nobody seems to care that their neighborhoods are littered with doggie doodoo.  There must be an answer…

…this really has turned in to an obsession for me…I need to solve the mystery of the Dog Shit before I leave this city!