Do You Rescue Abandoned Poop?
I took the kids for their evening walk at the park tonight. It was another wonderful evening; 90 degrees, high humidity with a slight coating of city smog. Ahh, summertime in Atlanta. Truth be told, I actually prefer this type of weather, outside of the smog part.
The park we frequent is actually a civil war battleground and is heavily wooded with dirt paths for walking the dogs. There’s a creek in the middle of the park that we like to let the kids play in, and it’s something they look forward to all day. So much fun for them and so much fun to watch.
Tonight, as I’m walking along I see this big ‘ole dump in the middle of the dirt path. A big ‘ole canine dump. I think to myself, if the owner can’t be bothered to pick it up, they could at least have the decency to kick it off the path. It’s just common courtesy.
I walked over to the poop and, making sure there were plenty of leaves between my sneaker and the turd, kicked it off the trail. As I thought about this latest incident, I realized the only reason I do this is so the rest of us dog owners don’t get a bad rap from the sad, dogless folks out there.
So I have to ask, when you see dog poo on a trail, sidewalk, park path, beach, etc, what do you do? Do you leave it alone, pick it up with an extra doggie doo bag, kick it off the beaten path, save it for Rover to eat later?
Do tell.
I carry extra poop bags with me. We usually walk in only our neighborhood. I hate having dog poop on my lawn, others seem not to mind, but I pick it up anyway. It attracts flys and frankly transmits disease. I don’t want my dog or any other dog to get sick.
If I see it, I remove it for the same reason you do. I think it’s a bit of a rude gesture not to clean up after your pet (in any manner) and it does get irritating when we’re all banned from a certain area because a few people can’t take a few minutes to scoop the poop. It’s common courtesy, if people don’t want to do it to keep the place looking nice and to be a decent dog owner, then they ought to at least clean up just for the sake of basic sanitation. I’m not too keen on my pup picking something up from a stray poo that someone’s owner didn’t have the courtesy or simply didn’t care to remove.
Well Horst, I usually fling it as you did or pick it up just because we feel that we are ambassadors of sorts for responsible dog owners. However, I must confess that one time many, many years ago we collected a large bag of dog poo. I then transported the turds and left them in the driver’s seat of my ex-husbands sports car. He had cheated on me. I figured if anyone deserved turds in their car, he did.
Like the rest of you, I get irritated by folks that don’t clean up after their dogs. They clearly don’t fully understand what it means to be a responsible pet owner. (They probably also throw trash out their car windows!) If I happen to have an extra poop bag, I clean it up, and if not then I try to at least move it out of the way if it’s in the middle of a trail or pathway. I loved hearing how Kenyon’s mom handled that particular bag of poop, LOL!
Left poop seems to “breed” more left poop…some lazy people see poop left behind and then follow suit. That ruins things for all of us. We fight about it all the time in my complex (condos). We know the couple that is the main offender and the woman has no idea that her husband isn’t scooping.
Even thought my dog doesn’t eat poop, my neighbor’s does (and got hook worms from that about two weeks ago), so I always scoop others’ poop when I see it.
Weeeeell….
*sigh*
Dad has been caught in the wrong place, at the wrong time without a poop bag… Having no resources, he has kicked it off a path or done the best he could with it at the time…
So.
He sometimes rescues abandoned poop to make up for the times he has abandoned one himself. The idea being, if everyone made the effort to pick up more than they put down, they would all sorta cover for each other.
Leaving poop behind is bad publicity for dogs!
Please, dog parents everywhere, take heed of these fine folks’ advise. Here in Iowa, it has just been on the news that in one town not far from Des Moines, they are having an outbreak of parvo amongst puppies of the town. They, of course, are warning people to keep their unvaccinated pups out of unfamiliar areas, lawns, parks, etc. And, they are urging people to get their pups vaccinated against parvo. If more of us would clean up after our own dogs and “stray” piles, we could avoid something like this happening. As one vet said, “This is a horrible way for a puppy to suffer and die”.
I carry poop bags in my car just for this reason. I will never understand why people don’t curb their dogs.
Heck, I even clean up after Coco goes at the dog park.
Use those grocery bags to clean up after your best friend.
In NYC growing up, I saw “curb your dog” signs all the time and thought it was funny. How do you make a dog move mid-poop? Just carry extra bags.
I always have an extra bag and treats in my pocket. Feeling them in my jacket/coat makes me smile when I’m at work.
Firstly… ew! I had a dog that was a poo eater and I think it’s one of the most disgusting habits a dog can have!
Secondly, I do actually carry extra poop bags with me just in case one of my dogs needs a second turn. I’ve used them to clean up after other dogs on more then one occasion, but that’s only if the dog and owner team that left it have long since moved on.
If I actually see a dog and owner team trying to flee the scene I’ll call them back and offer them one of my bags in am “almost” polite way.
I think it’s plain rude for owners to let their dogs poop on the sidewalk, or anywhere else for that matter, and not clean up afterwards!
Oh, Nancy J, I live in said town. It’s horrible.
I ALWAYS pick up the poop. In one of our community parks, they even PROVIDE the bags, yet we see free poops roaming all the time there. Some residents that live right on the trails, simply refuse to pick it up, its so frustrating.
We basically just walk in our neighborhood, but we always rescue unindentified poops left behind. We find it both disgusting and rude~ and a poo stain on the reputation of dogs and responsible dog owners alike. An offender of the neighborhood will yell at mom if we’re about to poop and he’ outside, to leave them in his yard, coz our’s are so small~she always politely tells him that it would be rude, that it stinks and attracts flies. He never “offends” our yard when walking his two little dogs after dark, LOL!
Were we live theres a lake where dogs are welcomed we must be leashed and you must clean up after your dog.Our mom always picks up ours however there is so much poop at the lake mom has to take off her shoes before she gets in the car.Every step you take its either doggie dooo or goose poop. We wish more people would clean up after their pets.If mom took it upon herself to pick up all others she would be out there 24/7.She wishes the village would have a lake clean up day cuz she would be there helping .