Toronto author's poop book a 'best smeller'

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Sometimes poo-tastic ideas are created by doing a crappy chore.

As every dog owner knows, finding and bagging your dog’s poo during daily walks is not always easy.

Dog lover Joe Shyllit decided to make this chore a little more entertaining with his new book Find the Poo.

The book was conceived while the renowned Canadian advertising creative director was walking Farfel, his 10-year-old cockapoo, one fall evening.

“The leaves were very colourful on the ground. Farfel was doing his business, and when I reached to get a bag, I was struggling to find the poo. I noticed the leaves made a beautiful photograph,” explains Shyllit.

“So this first picture started the whole process.”

With creative juices flowing, Shyllit first thoughts were to create a gallery show.

“But having galleries hang natural photographs with a piece of poo in them might be a little hard, so I decided to deconstruct it and reconstruct it as a book,” said Shyllit.

Two years later with an average of 20 hours a week of perseverance and hard work, Shyllit created an original concept in the form of a hardcover book.

Readers look at each picture, find the excrement that is often hidden behind twigs or in shadow. If they are not sure of their accuracy, the answers are circled in diagrams at the back of the book.

It’s an entertaining way of completing a necessary dogowner chore, and he isn’t the only one that likes the idea — it’s selling three times faster than other new books of similar genres on the shelves at Indigo.

“It seems to be striking a chord with both kids and parents because kids love poo,” adds Shyllit.

And what does Farfel think of all of this?

Shyllit speaks about getting him a limousine driver and a tux to keep him in line with his new-found fame. But as Farfel wanders through a downtown Toronto park he seems indifferent.

Perhaps he is happy to be able to just “do his business” and leave the fun of finding it up to the humans.

vhenri@postmedia.com

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