Some days, the best part of the newspaper is the wrapper it comes in.

I say that because I once again judge a plastic bag through the rosy specs of dog ownership. That is, I can't look at a small plastic bag anymore without considering how well it might hold dog poop.

Until recently I was smitten by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's double-ply newspaper bags, which I found to be quite protective of my hand when I scoop up Sam's "business." The Tribune-Review's newspaper bags, which are a garish red (as opposed to the PG's clear plastic bags), are merely one-ply. Until a couple of weeks ago, the PG had two-ply bags, which they replaced with one-ply bags, though two-ply bags are an obvious advantage when picking up the dog's number two.

This is the sort of mush-brained thinking that happens to a dog lover who's been without a dog for a while and then gets another dog.

Several months back my wife, Anne, and I got a hand-me-down dog from her parents -- a scruffy-looking, gray-and-black mongrel. His prominent underbite and his slightly upturned nose make him appear scrappy, and possibly part Irish. As near as I can figure, Sam seems to be a schnauzer-chow mix, given his schnauzer-like head, his chow-like build, curly tail and spotted tongue.

He won me over fast, and now I giddily pick up his waste. Jerry Seinfeld said, and I agree, that if aliens are watching us from outer space, they definitely think dogs are the smarter species.

As Sam and I walk through the neighborhood at night, dogs bark in a cascade of woofs and yelps on down the block. The other night two chihuahuas a couple of houses behind us ran out of their front yard and down the street after us a bit, barking mightily at Sam.

"Hey! You two get back here! Mummy can't chase you out there!" the dogs' owner yelled from an open front door. The dogs slowly trailed back, letting loose a few muffled yips, feeling like they'd done their duty.

At night, or in mornings, the atmosphere often is still as Sam and I walk through Blackridge, our neighborhood. Train whistles echo up the valley through the community, reminding me of every Pittsburgh neighborhood I've lived in. The calm enables me to think great thoughts.

I consider the legacy that Sam and I are leaving when I pick up his "dump," then wrap the PG bagful in a grocery store bag (because the handles are great), and trash it to send to the landfill.

Maybe archaeologists will dig up Sam's deposits in 1,000 years, analyze the contents, and be reaffirmed in their belief that ours was a civilization that deserved to end, I ponder. I imagine a scientist coming to the revelation that we 21st-century dog lovers fed our pups food from our plates. "Free-range grass-fed filet mignon!" she'll say. "They fed their dogs as well as themselves."

The other day as Sam and I rounded one of the bends of the curving roads of our neighborhood, it came to me. I felt I knew why the PG had such sturdy newspaper bags -- it obviously was a ploy to sell more papers to dog lovers.

I checked the statistics and found a high correlation between dog ownership and newspaper subscription in families, and I thought I had the PG's latest marketing scheme all figured out.

Then the newspaper's management had to change to a one-ply newspaper bag, and kill my theory.