The Picky Pooper

My dog is a picky pooper. Rufus will not poop unless conditions are ideal. Now what constitutes ideal conditions is beyond me...I can't figure him out.  Take this morning for instance....we were walking along the road and he started that intense sniffing that signals, IT'S TIME! I stopped and waited. He sniffed...walked around...and sniffed some more. He started circling in ever decreasing circles...assumed the position...and then....started sniffing again. We walked a little further...he stopped again. This was it...he circled, sniffed, circled again. Suddenly he plunged deeper into the ditch in search of *the* perfect spot, dragging me behind him. He was a dog on a mission...intent on finding his special spot. I was a human with snow going into my boots. I tried to drag him out of the ditch and get him back on the road to make it easier to pick the poop....(because of course being a responsible dog owner, I do poop and scoop. Well I don't poop and scoop...my dogs poop, I scoop!) but he was having no part of that. He had finally found "it"...the spot. There he was perched on the other side of the deep ditch on top of a huge snowbank. He circled, circled again, humped over with a look of concentration on his face. Just then a bus full of elementary school kids went by with little laughing faces peering out at us through iced up windows. And poof..there went my dignity. Once he was finished it was my job to climb up onto the snowbank and retrieve the poop. I managed to get up there, but balancing while stooping and scooping was no small feat. I dug into my pocket and retrieved one of ever present vanilla scented poop bags, plunged my hand into it and bent to pick up the prize. This time I was lucky...my fingers stayed within the confines of the plastic bag..last time..oh never mind, that's another story.