Rose's Cantina

The City of Ottawa never does anything halfway with the exception of the pedestrian bridge over the Airport Parkway. It builds overpasses along the Queensway over the weekend. It blows up football stadium like jihadists. And when asked to deliver a second poo bin to the Conroy Pit, the City of Ottawa delivers! The newest edition goes six feet down and has enough capacity for the feces of thousands and thousands of dogs. Wowee! We, the dog walkers of the Conroy Pit could not be happier. Thank you, Diane Deans. Thank you, CBC, for making this happen. Our dogs can now poop knowing their contributions are going to a first class poop station.

Conroy Pit, an off-lease dog park in the south end of Ottawa, is one of my favorite places on Earth. It is a mecca for dog lovers who come out to see the myriad breeds of dogs run, hustle and spin. It's also a great place to socialize new canines and keep the old ones tuned up. Unfortunately, things are changing in our beloved park and not for the better. The City of Ottawa has recently re-gigged its budget for the park and fired its private contractors, the ones who used to come and empty the dog poo bins which were placed at the entrance to the park and at a midway point. The one in the middle has disappeared completely and the entrance bin has been replaced by what I like to call The Giant Head, a spaceship-sized dome which could easily consume a ton of doggie doo. I suppose the change was made so that The Giant Head only had to be emptied once a millennium by some company owned by Rod Bryden. I cannot see how it could be emptied at all given the size o...

Dear Mayor Watson: I have a bum knee, otherwise, I'd have tracked you down at one of the shopping malls where you've moved your office. I have a bone to pick, yessiree, Jimbo. And here it is. My dog park, located at Conroy Pit, has dog poo in nearly all of the trees these days. Some of it is low hanging, some of it is hidden away in tree crotches and some of it is speared onto branches to resemble piñatas. It's in festive blue and red bags, but most of it has Galen Weston's brand on it. President's Choice, the King of Poo. If you look in the bushes, there is poo there, too, on the mossy landscape. It's not laying there like the dogs decided to take a crap and the owners didn't pick it up (although there is some of that, too). Nope, the owners have been vigilant about wrapping their dogs' turds before hanging it up. But sometimes, they forget where they leave it. I believe this is the fault of your council. Perhaps it is the fault of th...

There is a leafy little enclave just down the street from us, which surrounds a National Defence Medical Facility. It's a wonderful pocket in the middle of the city where dogs owners can take their hounds to sniff the trees, and each other, a place where owners greet each dog by name even though they've never bothered to ask the names of the other minders. Places like this exist all over the Nation's Capital. It's what I love about this town. It's a people place with miles of bicycle trails and open spaces, which are paid for by the rest of the country. On behalf of Ottawans, I thank the good people of Canada. But there's a storm brewing down the street and it's pitting dog owners against the government. It's about the poop situation. For the past couple of years, the military has been paying soldiers to pick up random poop all over the field. Most dog owners are responsible and do their due diligence but for some reason some people in our littl...