Let’s talk dog shit for a moment. Look, I know that’s a weird conversation opener but here we are – you’re just going to have to deal with it.
More specifically, let’s talk about the kind of dog shit that seems to invade all of your senses at once, lingering in the air until it’s all you can smell and there’s no escaping it.
Yes, I know you can probably tell I’ve been traumatised by it at some point, but that’s a story for another day (or later in this article, who knows?). For now though, let’s talk about one guy who had a much worse experience, involving a pile of dog shit and his hoover.
The man, Ryan Landy, never anticipated when buying his robotic Roomba that his decision would come back to haunt him in such a shitty way (sorry, I couldn’t resist).
So when he walked into his kitchen and saw poo smeared everywhere, he simply wasn’t expecting it. After all, why would he ever consider his hoover might one day go on a shit-spreading rampage around his house?!
In all honesty, I can only imagine the things that were going round his head when he opened the door and saw his white tiles had undergone somewhat of a makeover – or under.
‘Has a wild boar let itself into my house and defecated everywhere?’ ‘Has the plumbing gone AWOL?’ ‘What on Earth is that smell?!’ The list goes on…
He quickly cottoned on to what had caused the damage when he saw his new Roomba, also covered in dog shit after its busy antics, sitting in the corner. What a treat!
Ryan, from Coral Springs, Florida, shared pictures of the damage done by the robotic hoover – both to his floor and to the appliance itself, whose entire bottom half was coated in dog faeces – on Facebook. I’m going to take a quick guess and say that’s never getting used again.
The unlucky dog owner also shared his woes on Reddit, where he explained he had recently rescued the dog and he’s ‘not fully trained’ – hence the pooing inside the house.
Ryan also explained how he had left the Roomba inside the room with the door closed, however the dog must have opened the door by himself and taken a dump inside when no-one was looking.
The phenomenon is surprisingly common, and even drew the attention of Roomba’s creators in 2016.
As reported by The Guardian, a spokesperson for the company commented:
Quite honestly, we see this a lot.
We generally tell people to try not to schedule your vacuum if you know you have dogs that may create such a mess. With animals anything can happen.
If there’s anything we’ve learnt from this experience, it’s that everything is the robotic hoover’s fault, or at least the owner’s, and not the dog’s – whom I think we can safely assume thought he was just lending a helping hand/paw.
What a good boy.
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A Broadcast Journalism Masters graduate who went on to achieve an NCTJ level 3 Diploma in Journalism, Lucy has done stints at ITV, BBC Inside Out and Key 103. While working as a journalist for UNILAD, Lucy has reported on breaking news stories while also writing features about mental health, cervical screening awareness, and Little Mix (who she is unapologetically obsessed with).