Two minutes with Danny Katz: Is it trashy to put dog-poo bags in a stranger’s bin?

Q: When walking my dog, I make sure I have enough plastic poo bags, but since there are infrequent public bins around, I sometimes use someone’s bin on the nature strip or on their property if it’s within my reach. Am I breaching neighbourly etiquette?
D.W., North Caulfield, Vic

A: Under NO circumstances should ANY dog owner EVER drop their disgusting doggy bags into somebody else’s wheelie bin. This has always been my clear and unwavering position … until last year, when I became a dog owner.

You see, my dog is a special breed known as a Rear-Squatting, Eye-Squinting, Prolific Excreter: somehow, more comes out of this dog than goes in, so mathematically, he’s a “negative dog”. And sometimes on a dog walk, I’ve found myself desperately searching for a public bin, carrying several fully filled bags, with two more tucked under my chin.

In these emergency situations, I’ve occasionally snuck bags into a complete stranger’s bin, but I’ve always abided by the following conditions:

1. The bin must be on a nature strip: you can’t step onto someone’s property and use the bins in the driveway, or crawl through their bedroom window and use their wastepaper basket.

Loading

2. It must be bin night: you can’t drop your bag into a newly emptied bin where it will fester for a whole week. (The same goes for unloading bags of rotting prawn heads or dismembered human remains.)

3. It must be a general rubbish bin: dog poo is not recyclable, nor is it green waste (even if your dog ate grass and it came out green and you had to help yank it out like a magic handkerchief trick).

4. The bin-drop must be performed covertly, on an unfamiliar street, with face fully masked, while racked with feelings of utter guilt. The utter guilt is mandatory.