Nearly everyone’s heard of Manneken Pis, the peeing boy statue, in Brussels.  Few are familiar with Jeanneke Pis, the peeing girl statue.  But almost no one has ever heard of or seen . . . wait for it . . . Zinneke Pis, the peeing mutt statue.

I am hard pressed to explain the Bruxellois fascination with public urination.  There are dozens of versions of the story of the peeing boy.  Most center around the theme of a cheeky young lad saving the day by peeing on the enemy, a bomb, fire, etc., to save the day.

The two-foot tall bronze statue was made in 1619 by Brussels sculptor Hieronimus Duquesnoy and has been repeatedly stolen over the centuries.  The vintage of the current statue is 1965. The original restored version is kept at the Maison du Roi/Broodhuis on the Grand Place.

Images of Manneken Pis are everywhere, in every size and color, hawking everything.  Hordes of tourists from all over the world swarm the statue day and night in Brussels’ old town, making it challenging to squeeze in and snap a picture.  The boy has his own wardrobe and goes through more costume changes than a performer at the Grammy Awards.

The famous statue is located at the junction of Rue de l’Étuve and Rue du Chêne. To find it, bear left at the Brussels Town Hall on the Grand Place and walk a couple hundred yards southwest via Rue Charles Buls.

Of course, since Belgium is justifiably famous for its chocolate you can buy versions of Manneken Pis in white, milk and dark.  As I was fogging up the windows of one of thousands of chocolate shops near the Grand Place, my eyes landed on a lollipop version of the urinating statue.  Peeing boy on a stick?  Woohoo!  I know it’s wrong, oh so wrong, to lick the image of a naked boy but I knew my twisted friends would enjoy this tacky souvenir immensely (and they did).  I don’t know what was funnier, my dirty, smirking little laugh as I picked out my purchase or the shop girl laughing at my candy kink.

Fueled with good humor and sugar, I was on to my next destination, the peeing girl.  She’s a fairly recent addition to the Belgian collection of urinating statues added in 1987.  Jeanneke is also located not far from the Grand Place.  Simply follow the steady stream of young, Japanese visitors and wind your way through a labyrinth of tourist-trap restaurants serving mussels (Mussels in Brussels, try it if that’s your thing.  I’ll stick with waffles, Frites and beer, thank you very much).

Jeanneke Pis is tucked away in a dark, narrow alley just past the Delirium Tremens bar.  She was a tad disappointing.  She’s protected by a metal bars and she’s going about her business in girl fashion, squatting with a hiked up dress.  I jostled my way to the front, shoved my camera through the metal bars and quickly snapped off a picture of her to prove to my friends on social media that I was actually there.  (Postcards are sooooo last century.)  Now two for two, I’m energized to locate the third peeing statue.

In the local dialect the word “Zinneke” means bastard dog. Like all good mutts, Zinneke Pis is hard to find.  He’s located away from the cheek-to-jowl, hustle/bustle of souvenir and chocolate shops around the Grand Place.  Also it was December and dark, making the task at hand that much more difficult.

I began to feel like Marlin Perkins in search of the elusive white rhino on an old episode of “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.”  Inspired by this thought, I did what most of the big game hunters do. I got out my tracking device, Googled peeing dog Brussels and then used MapQuest to hunt him down.  (Okay, my compellingly curious travel kittens — don’t try this abroad.  It was dark, I was alone, I’m in a foreign city.  We’ve all seen this movie on Lifetime and know how it ends.)

Perhaps me taking orders from a talking smart phone (and I may or may not have been talking back) weirded out enough people to stave off an attack.  After quite a bit of the road-less-traveled style wandering through extremely scenic downtown Brussels, I wound up near the Fish Market area at the corner of rue des Chartreux and rue du Vieux-Marché with my quarry insight.

I’d saved the best for last.  Nobody puts Zinneke Pis in a corner.  He’s just out on the street calmly going about his mutt business without a lot of fanfare.  No metal bars, no fighting with heaving masses of other tourists, just unfettered, 360-degree access to a urinating statue.  But that wasn’t even the coolest part of the experience, although it was pretty freaking cool.

Belgium has a great cartoon culture.  The Adventures of TinTin and the Smurfs were born here.  Scenes from some of these famous cartoons decorate the walls of buildings downtown.  Inspired by this tradition, local artists had done some super groovy graffitti around Zinneke Pis.  On the day I found him, Zinneke Pis was peeing on the word “racism.”  That put a bigger smile on my face than all the Manneken Pis lollipops in the world.

Zinneke Pis is definitely the crown jewel in the trifecta of urinating statues in Brussels.  Tracking him down was well worth me indulging my compelling curiosity.