I can't have pride. I have a dog. A dog who poos at inappropriate times.

Growing up, we belonged to the local country club. I'm from a small town; it wasn't a big deal. My brother and I had swimming and tennis and golf lessons to showcase our general physical ineptitude (me) and athletic prowess (him). We also reveled in downing a Snickers and a can of Pepsi every afternoon at the pool.

Just the thought of that makes me want to die. If I ingested a Pepsi and a Snickers now, my heart would explode. First, it would stop, then it would beat me senseless, then it would explode into a million sugar-covered fragments.

Anyway. Country club. Lots of sugar. No big deal.

But now I live in the big city, and have reached an age where my friends are joining country clubs. It makes sense - their kids are old enough for the swimming and tennis and golf, and it can be a pretty sweet set-up if you have a neighborhood club where your friends and your kids' friends go.

My Guy and I don't belong to a club. Well, we belong to AAA. But I mean a country club.

Tonight, I remembered why.

Some friends who belong to a very chill country club invited us to the closing-the-pool party - The Doggie Dip!

I took Big Doodle to swim and socialize with other canines. I'd never seen him around water before, but I figured that seeing as he's a labradoodle - and "lab" is part of the breed name - that he'd take to water like, well, a lab.

Our hosts don't currently have a dog, and the hopes and dreams of their kids hung on Big Doodle's performance at The Doggie Dip. The kids desperately wanted to play with Big Doodle, to throw balls into the pool and laugh gleefully as he retrieved them. The kids wanted it so badly, they could taste it.

Guess who evidently doesn't care for water?

Lemme put it this way: Big Doodle got wet because the kids finally resorted to cupping their hands and dumping pool water on him. Oh, and he fell in the pool once, trying to reach a dog treat. But that was it.

Big Doodle spent a lot of his time just happening to meander by the buffet, just in case a hot dog - or braut - fell. He wasn't picky. He was just trying to be of service.

Big Doodle meandered, and sniffed other dogs, and tried to go home with a few other families. Then, he took a giant dump on the pool deck.

My sweet boy doesn't just stop and poo. He poos and walks, spreading giant chunks of shit as he goes. And have I mentioned that he's pushing 90 pounds? And that I make his dog food out of brown rice, veggies, and beef, so the consistency of his poo is ... not conducive to quick and tidy cleanup?

The good news is that I had a bag, and I ran over and picked up the poo before any other canines stepped in it or ate it. It's also good news that later, another dog took a much larger, much more heinous dump in the same area, and those owners didn't clean it up. Mega gross, but don't I look awesome by comparison?

Big Doodle is a dog and he did what dogs do. But as I was cleaning up the doo, I couldn't help but think, "We are never going to get invited to join this club." Like countless upwardly mobile mothers before me, my children had ruined my hopes of "getting in."

OK, not really. But seriously - my dog shat at the country club. Pretty sure this means that we're not country club folk.