Is it OK to leave dog poop in yard?
People often believe that leaving dog waste to decompose in the yard is good for the lawn, but the truth is that dog poop is toxic for your grass, said PetHelpful. … For this reason, dog poop also shouldn’t be placed in your compost or used to fertilize your garden.
What happens if you don’t pick up dog poop?
Because of their diet, dogs can have up to two and a half times more nitrogen than cows in their waste. If you do not promptly pick up your pet’s poop—it can take a year to naturally decompose—the high nitrogen content can burn your green grass, leaving brown dead spots.
While it is difficult to calculate the exact cost of cleaning up dog waste since it is part of the general cleaning responsibilities of local park and landscaping crews, the neglecting of picking up dog waste appears to only be part of a much larger problem; that being littering and illegal dumping of trash and debris.
Frost added, “We can’t be the people complaining about the garbage all over the streets, in our waterways and in remote areas of the county, and then leaving dog waste bags behind in our parks or on the trails. It makes you the same type of person; a litterbug.”
However, the use of the trails for pets and their owners has been a noticeable cause of concern amongst other trail users due to uncollected pet waste. And it is an ongoing problem that continues to persist in many places.
According to Marquez, park goers and trail users can also be more proactive in helping to keep parks clean and reporting those that fail to clean up after their pets, adding that a clean and safe park or trail devoid of litter and pet waste makes for a more enjoyable experience for everyone.
While things like increasing signage explaining rules and policies to dog owners in parks or trails, or providing more complimentary pet waste bags can assist in educating the public, at the end of the day, officials agree that it is up to the pet owners themselves to be accountable for cleaning up after their pets.
How to catch dog owners allowing their dogs poop on your lawn & not pick it up after them.
The other day, I happened upon a neighbor cleaning up a mess in the middle of our street.
He explained the do wasn’t his dog’s doing, but he had taken it upon himself to remove it.Advertisement
Nearly five months ago, as you may recall, we ended our three-year mourning period for the Best Dog in the World and brought home a standard poodle puppy whose intelligence, I like to say, is more akin to a baboon’s than a normal dog’s.
He’s just now beginning to lift his leg in a precarious three-point stance to perfume trees that speak to him in mysterious olfactory ways.
When he spins into his yoga elimination pose, I dutifully tug at the canister of designer plastic bags affixed to the leash and do what owners, great and small, must do.
While he was president, Barack Obama told a television interviewer, “We go out (with his dogs) and we’re walking and I’m picking up poop, and in the background is the beautifully lit White House. It’s quite a moment.”
Well, the Rose Garden has hosted many generations of dogs. (Oddly, Donald Trump is the first president since McKinley not to own a dog.)
Many otherwise affable people grind their teeth at the use of their (or public) property as latrines.
Dog owners, it should be conceded, owe a deep debt of gratitude to a society that allows pets the freedom of relief they enjoy on walks.
“Pooper scooper” laws have been on the books for decades, but rarely, if ever, do violators receive citations. (One city park ranger reports he has never cited a poop scofflaw.)
San Diego County’s code, which echoes the city of San Diego’s, sets a standard that would, if enforced, make walking a dog an exercise in curbing nature’s call.
“No person having control of a dog shall allow a dog to defecate or to urinate (yes, urinate) on private property other than property belonging to the dog owner, custodian or person having control of the dog. A person having control of a dog shall curb the dog and immediately remove any feces to a proper receptacle. This section shall not apply to a blind or visually impaired person who is relying on a seeing-eye dog.”
The admonition to “curb” dogs is a throwback to the ’30s when pets were expected to let loose in gutters, storm drains be damned. (In all my years, I have never seen anyone guide Lassie to the curb to do her business.)
In practice, “curbing” dogs has evolved into a euphemism for picking up the poop while, let’s be frank, letting them piddle at will.
We know from empirical evidence (i.e., piles left behind) that a stubborn minority of dog owners just don’t believe that they need to clean up the feces their dogs produce.
A city near Madrid takes DNA samples when dogs are registered. Uncollected stools are tested and the owner fined. (Not surprisingly, illicit droppings have plummeted.)
More practical in San Diego is public shaming of the irresponsible coupled with dog owners taking a lesson from my neighbor and picking up every pile they encounter.
The very least dog owners can do to thank society for its indulgence is clean up any and all dog droppings they encounter with the same care as if their bundle of joy had produced a steaming pile on their own lawn.
John Donne, if he lived in today’s dog-obsessed world, might have written this bell-ringer of a passage:
“No stool is an island entire of itself; every dropping is a piece of the nuisance, a part of the pollution. And therefore never send for whom the poop belongs; it belongs to thee.”
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