Dogs (and raccoons) were deliberately poisoned recently in Toronto's High Park. Nobody knows why.

The police never found the person who poisoned a dog at my neighbourhood park a summer or so ago. City dogs and their owners have a way, it seems, of provoking both kindly and murderous thoughts in non-dog owners.

I am not a dog owner myself, though I have come to regard pets more affectionately over the years. My wife would love a dog. She talks to dogs when she sees them as you would talk to a baby.

But she is a busy woman and insists that I take care of the animal if we are to acquire one. No deal, I say.

No doubt many real dog owners are busy people, too, because they do the strangest, most inconsiderate things. Last week, for example, I had to scoop two plastic bags filled with dog poo out of the lawn cuttings bag, which I had placed by the curb.

I suppose a dog owner (or two) thought, "heck, I'll drop it here. It's just compost." Don't they know that dog poo belongs in the food recycler bin?

The Tao of dog poo

Plastic bags full of dog excrement are a ubiquitous ornament in today's urban landscape. They have a way of appearing in empty garbage bins after they've been collected. They also show up in recycling boxes, perched on top of the newspaper and plastics.

I've seen them hung from fences, gates and around door handles. They are like messages in a bottle, washed up on the familiar cityscape.

But, of course, you can't quite decipher the message here. Are they urban inukshuks, pointing the way for fellow dog enthusiasts? Or merely a sign of careless owners? Perhaps it would take a professor of semiotics at the university to figure this out.

At one time, I lived in a neighborhood where doggie bags would appear early in the morning. They were tied almost tactfully with a plastic bow as if they were a birthday present.

The bag would be dropped at different corners or in front of different houses. Sometimes, I thought, I'd wake up really early to catch the culprit. Or camp out overnight, sleeping under the starless city sky. How much is an urban annoyance worth anyway?

Tying one on

I can understand totally rude dog owners who just allow their dogs to plop. Or dog owners whose dog plopped and they had already used their last bag at an earlier stop.

But here was a person who took the time to collect the dog poo and tie it up nicely. So, why wouldn't this person at least walk the bag to bin at the park nearby? Or bring it home to his or her own green bin? Why this half effort? It was baffling.

If you think I may be the only person bothered about this, I am not. According to the ingenious Brit who runs PsyBlog, "urban dwellers cite incivility as their top urban stresser."

He cites new research published in the Journal of Social Psychology that looks at "the types of uncivil behaviours that provoked the most anger." Number one was "failure to pick up after one's dog."

The five virtues

But our academic research need not end here. Jonathan Haidt, the charming, boyish psychologist I wrote about last week, studies conservative and liberal values in order to understand the nature of civic morality.

Morality is based on five virtues, he posits. A liberal sees the world through two: Concerns about "harm versus care" and "fairness and reciprocity."

Conservatives employ these two, but draw heavily on three more: "Sensitivity to in-group boundaries, authority, and purity and sanctity."

In short, liberals emphasize individual codes of behaviour, harm reduction and equality. Conservatives balance these out with a concern for hierarchy and a respect for authority and wholesomeness.

These are neat categories and they make me wonder: Is the person who drops his dog poo in my yard-waste bag a liberal or a conservative? What about the person who leaves the tidy present for us homeowners outside our doorstep?

Put aside the answer that these people may be thoughtless jerks. What is at stake is an experiment in civic virtue.

Sharing the urban burden

The person who drops the doggie bag may feel she (or he) is exercising the autonomy of her person. She may feel it is only fair I help her dispose of her doggie poo.

She may even think this protects her vulnerable self because she no longer has to walk so far to dispose of her trash.

Placing the dog poo in my bag or by the curb is a virtuous act that, in her eyes, demands that I assist her in her civic duty. Plus, she may have felt that my house was bigger than hers and fairness dictated I should do my share (like graduated taxes).

A conservative, on the other hand, would emphasize group and community standards as well as rules and purity. He would demand respect for the person based on the laws of the common good.

Dropping the dog poo is a violation of these laws and standards. The dictum of purity is violated by the messiness of the whole enterprise.

A good liberal might empathize with my desire not be inconvenienced but would see the need for fairness in dealing with her problem of handling her dog's droppings. Her harm reduction trumps my irritation.

Why am I grumpy?

If you think I am simply being a conservative grump here, I'm not. Like Haidt, I would define myself as a moderate liberal.

What is useful about Haidt's research is that he's trying to understand and appreciate conservatives. In his academic world, most people are liberal minded.

As well, they often have a certain disdain for conservatives. In their opinion, conservatives are not "right-thinking" enough, so to speak. Worse, some liberals think conservative are inherently evil and are in it only for themselves or their cronies.

But contempt is never constructive in any political discourse. And for his part, Haidt is trying to broaden the circle of understanding, which can be seen as a liberal trait based on empathy.

Haidt, though, believes that tolerance, another liberal trait, can go too far. And real conservatives (as opposed to free-market fundamentalists) have a similar tack: That too much freedom gets you lost. That is, too much freedom unshackled from community and civic standards.

Have I changed my mind about my invisible dog poo droppers? No, I'm still annoyed. But I have translated my irritation into understanding. Told you I was a liberal.