Keep your dog poop out of my yard!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Here’s the story:

A little over 2 years ago, we moved into a quiet neighborhood. We made friends quickly with our new neighbors and all seemed well. My husband was looking forward to finally having a yard of his own to mow and plant gardens.

During our first summer there, we would find dog droppings from larger dogs. We own two very small Chihuahuas whose feces are about the size of cocktail weiners, so it’s quite obvious they aren’t from our puppies. There were a couple houses in the neighborhood that own larger dogs, so we weren’t 100% where they came from. A couple across the street had a beautiful German Shepherd who we would see outside without a leash. But we had yet to see him come over into our yard.

Over the next couples months, we saw more droppings. The people across the street moved out so by elimination, it wasn’t their dog. We still were baffled because we had not seen any animals in our yard besides the occasional rabbit.

The day had finally arrived. Our next-door neighbors’ dog was spotted defecating in our yard. At first we just threw it out. After several months of this, my husband went over and had a talk with them about the problem. They apologized and we went on our way.

This past Monday (and pretty much any other day he mows), he went out to check the yard before cutting the grass. Of course there were more feces. He has gotten into the habit of taking a shovel and tossing it back in their yard, so again this is what he does. I have tried to get him to just put it in a bag so I could “hand deliver” it to them and give them a piece of my mind. He doesn’t want to cause a neighborhood war, so he just deals with it.

This morning as I was leaving for work I went to close all of our windows. What did I see? One of the owners in our front yard with their new dog, their Golden Retriever. Quick thinking, I grabbed our digital camera and took picutres out of one of our upstairs windows.

I looked up the number for Animal Control and they said since he was standing there with the dog, there’s nothing we can do. So I call our local police department, there’s nothing they can do.

During the 4th of July, we were visiting some of our other neighbors and she gave us a lot of dirt on these people. She said one evening she was out on her front porch smoking and their original dog (I think it’s a Shetland or Collie of some kind) wanders over and poops in her yard. She says nothing, just watches. When the dog finished it scurried back over to it’s owner where she says “Good dog!” and they go inside.

We’ve all had talks with these people and it gets us no where. There’s absolutely no protection for citizens who do not want dog feces in their yards. What can we do? We’ve tried getting chemicals that keep animals off our yard, but they wash away. We put up a 6’ privacy fence in our backyard so our dogs have a safe place to run (a squirrel could eat my dogs, well not really, but it’d put up a good fight) and so it would keep their dog out of our back yard.

We just don’t know what to do anymore. We’re going to do some landscaping and we’re thinking about putting up shrubs to line the property line, but the dog can just walk around it. A friend of mine here at work said he’d make a “No Tresspassing” sign for us so if we see them again in our yard, we can prosecute. But that’d be money we’d have to spend that we don’t have just so the judge can say “stay off their property”. I’m at a total loss here.

I don’t want to harm the dogs, it’s not their fault. But I think it’s bad of the owners to allow their dogs to just go wherever they please at the expense of their neighbors, in my eyes it’s neglect and poor training. People like that shouldn’t be allowed to have dogs.

So what say you, Dopers? Have any tricks that we can do? I told my husband to just collect it in a bag and I’ll go dump it on their doorstep or on their cars. I’m just sick of it. We paid for this house and our yard, why shouldn’t we have any protection?

2

Document the times you see them with the dog in your yard, date, time etc. Keep the pictures. I would put up the “No Trespassing” sign, and the first time you see them in your yard after it was put up, advise them you don’t want them to take their dog onto your lawn to poo anymore. Document each time you advise them of your new policy, then follow through and prosecute after the “Third Strike”. I wonder if you could document a “harassment” case and persue it in that way? If the situation got bad enough, I’d be tempted to get a restraining order against them both, so that you could prosecute them if they took their dog to poo in your yard.

Ah, I would also cultivate a squeaky clean reputation, which means quit putting the shit in their yard. (Even though it is justice in a way, you need to have your nose clean, so you can be the unquestioned injured party in this, no need to muddy things.) Just throw it away, that kind of thing could only escalate things and maybe encourage them to annoy you more, and escalate. Good luck.

I know it seems like a lot of hassle, but think of how bad it could get with the “shit war”, and what it could escalate to. Shut it down, before it gets really ugly. They seem rational enough that if you did bring them to court for trespassing they’d probably let you be. (Do you really think people like that could be your best friends in the first place? Why? They might be cold and distant afterwards, but that isn’t a bad thing.) Right now in a way you are still being their doormat, so stand up for yourself and stop them.

3

Ah, as for your concerns here:

That’s the thing, if you do take them to court for trespassing, and they still persist, you can take it up a notch. It will cost them money too, (At least, I think they’d get fined?) and you could build a case of harassment. Their reputations would go down the drain, and especially if they are the types that want people to see them as upstanding citizens, it would be something they would want to avoid, so they’d desist. The main thing is, you have to follow through on this, and not back down. Don’t let them cow you. I’d say that when they see you’re not going to back down, they’ll stop doing that to you. The only reason they are doing it is because people are letting them by not standing up for themselves.

4

Give them The 2006 Dog Poop Calendar along with a note that says “Welcome to my world”.

5

Another thought, is there a city ordinance regarding dog poop? Many cities require dog owners to clean up the poo within a certain time/every so often and not leave it. What they are doing could be a health code/city ordinance violation. It certainly isn’t healthy. Maybe if you and the rest of your neighbors got together and brought this issue up to the city, they’d get fined and made to “clean up their act”? Could they be fined for littering even? You do have photographic proof, and I assume there is no “poopy bag/scooper” in sight either, right?

6

There’s no city ordinance unfortunately, but I plan on writing to the mayor of our little town and see what he can do. I have a call in the the county health department right now. Just waiting to hear back.

I am in the process of putting together a sign, it has a dog pooping with the red circle with the line down the center. My other thoughts were public humiliation, such as: put a sign up with an arrow pointing to their house saying something like “dog poop violators live here” or handing out flyers to my neighbors that we have a resident who allows their dog to defecate in people’s yards (with the photo for proof). We also found these things called Scarecrows which are motion-activated sprinklers, there are also some alarm-type things we can put in that give off a sound only animals can hear. My co-worker told me I should make a print of one of the photos and put it in their mailbox. He said that should give the message.

I love the calendar! I might get that.

7

If you go the public humiliation route, do it via not backing down and prosecuting them for littering or trespassing. Don’t do things they could point out to the judge which might make the judge shrug and refuse to penalize them because both parties were out of line in his mind. You might ask some people at various agencies what you could do, and what your rights are regarding this. (There must be someone who could tell you what your rights are, and what recourses you can take to end this problem.) Is there some kind of Homeowner’s Association they have to answer to? I’m sure if there is, they’d not be happy to hear from all the people whose yards their dog has shit in. Be very careful not to do anything other than stand up for your rights to a yard free of your neighbor dog’s shit. I’d also start being meticulous about keeping my own dog’s poo cleaned up as well.

8

If the dog is in your yard, hit it with a garden hose, preferrably one with a powerful nozzle or cathc it an call the local animal authorities. The owner will get tired of having a wet dog or bailing their dog out of doggie jail. If the owner is there with the dog go outside and tell them to leave your property. The tree lawn is usually public property. You have to be direct though. Like on Nanny 911…this behavior is not acceptable and this is what will happen if it continues.

9

Don’t get your yard under my dog poop!

10

Well, the “public humiliation” route is pretty risky unless you want to live next door to people who hate your guts and are willing to go out of their way to make your life miserable for the foreseeable future. Granted, they’re jerks, but right now they seem to be oblivious jerks rather than malicious ones.

What I’d suggest is something like this little beauty – a motion-activated sprinkler. Obviously if they are pooping on or near a sidewalk it won’t be such a great solution, but it’s just your yard, then go wild. If you want to preserve plausible deniability, you can even plant some mint or something on the side of the yard and claim you put the sprinkler there to deter deer.

11

Your yard not fenced in? I’ve never much liked the “suburban” neighborhood atmosphere, so when I’ve had to live in one I’ve always had a fenced in yard. Both because I like dogs, have always owned them, and don’t want mine to be running around annoying the neighbors and also because I don’t want other people’s dogs to be annoying me.

12

Anyways I’ve had somewhat similar problems before. This was the first time I lived in a neighborhood like this and this is where I developed my rule that I’d always have a completely fenced in yard anytime I’m in a living situation like this.

I had two neighbors that were pretty much exactly like yours. I’d find their dogs pooping in my yard frequently. After several warnings I took up a policy that some may find rash, and it may have even been illegal, but I don’t know… consult a lawyer before doing this. After repeated warnings one day I find a dog pooping in my yard. I pick fido up, put him in my car and drive him to the local pound.

Later that day I have my neighbor, angry as hell on my door step. I told him I found a dog wandering around, breaking leash laws, on my property so I did what I felt was appropriate. The pound was actually somewhat reluctant to take the dog as the dog had tags with its address and name on it. I explained to the pound that I’m not in the business of returning dogs that I find wandering on my property to their owners. And I made it clear there was no way I was driving the dog away from the pound, so it was their problem.

I told my neighbor that leash laws exist for a reason, and that I felt the dog was in danger and that the pound would be able to return him to his owners. To this day I don’t really know if I was right or wrong, because my neighbor made a lot of threats but never followed through with them. Also, it wasn’t uncommon for me to see neighbors trying to “walk their dogs” in my yard. I’d just solve that by walking outside and telling said neighbor to leave my property in a polite manner. I never once had one of them argue with me in those situations, eventhough I had to go through that little play several times with each neighbor before I stopped seeing it happen.

13

Yeah, we saw the Scarecrow things, we’re thinking about it.

The only reasons I don’t see them as being oblivious is:
a.) My neighbors across the street witnessed one of their dogs taking a crap in her yard, then run back to its owner where it got a “Good dog!”.
b.) I caught my next-door neighbor IN MY YARD this morning and I have photos to prove it. It’s not like the dog wandered over here, he stood there and WATCHED his dog walk around our pine tree. I didn’t witness the dog “going”, but sniffing around and the owner just standing there was enough.

I can’t even tell how much poop we’ve scooped out of our yard that wasn’t our dogs’ and keep in mind not only have we had a discussion with them about this, so have our other neighbors.

I think my husband is stopping off at the police station on his way home. I might call him and see if he does that. If not, I’m sure he can call the station and ask one of the officers to come by. If we can’t get their dogs taken away, at least we can try to get them on trespassing and vandalism - hopefully?

I am just so infuriated by this whole thing. They knowingly have allowed their pets to come into other people’s yards and defecate and there’s nothing we seem to be able to do. We don’t have a fence, but at the same time what’s the use of building a small fence so the dog can just jump it? Remember, this is just a puppy Golden Retriever, it will get much bigger.

Here are the photos I took over at least a 5 minute span, if not longer (my camera was full and I had to keep deleting older pictures):

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Picture #5 clearly shows the guy next-door with the dog. I plan to take more pictures soon and I’m telling the other neighbors what’s been happening and show them the pictures.

14

I’d been meaning to start a thread like this for a while now.

In our case, we’ve never actually caught the dog(s) that poop on our property. We don’t know if it’s a loose dog, or someone walking their dog, but there are regularly piles o’ poop on the edges of the lawn closest to the street.

Due to the phsyical logistics of our driveway and garage, I have to park my car in a specific part of the driveway, with my left wheels actually on the grass. It’s particularly galling when the poop in question is left directly where my feet naturally fall as I exit the car. Another popular place spot is on the strip of grass nearest the sidewalk, which is where we leave our garbage cans on pickup day. And, of course, every instance of lawn-mowing is a horrifying dog crap explosion just waiting to happen.

I’ve not yet reached the point of talking to the town, and I’m nigh certain that they’ll say there’s nothing we can do. My thought now is to get a small sign that reads “If your dog uses our lawn, please scoop. Thanks!” and place it near the usual regions of deposit. (We haven’t been in the neighborhood all that long, and I don’t want to come across as too snarky.) Alas, I’m guessing that if a person is inconsiderate enough to leave their dog’s crap on our lawn in the first place, a friendly sign won’t sway them. But you never know.

I’m open to suggestions. We’ve considered a fence, but as it’s the front lawn facing the street, nothing would stop an offending dog from stepping onto the driveway and accessing the grass from there.

-P

15

  1. Why build a fence to stop a puppy? You can easily build a chain length fence that no dog can jump over.

  2. (For parthol) you can actually build a fenced gate for your driveway, so just because you need to access your driveway doesn’t mean you can’t fence that in too.

16

Well, I personally think it’s ugly and those things are only around 3.5’ or so tall. Won’t stop a full grown Lab if it really wants in there. Besides, why should I have to fork out even MORE money because our neighbors are rude? I won’t put that fence up, no way, no how. I bought my house to enjoy it, not hate it.

We are actually getting a “No Trespassing” sign put up. Where I live, if they violate that even ONCE, we can prosecute. Also, if I catch the dog in our yard and the owners are no where to be seen, we have leash laws and Animal Control can then come get them. But the owners have to not be near it. Since the puppy is still young, I’m sure they won’t let it out of their sight right now.

17

This all reminds me of a couple years ago when I was walking my leashed dogs down the sidewalk and a man went so far as to come out of his house and yell at me, “Those dogs better not poop on my lawn!” I pulled the plastic bags out of my pocket and said, “If they did, you’d never know,” and kept on walking, but I was amazed. I guess I was supposed to walk in the middle of the street with them?

It wasn’t like I was taking them to his yard solely for purpose of pooping on it, like it sounds like your neighbor is doing, PinkMarabou. You have every right to complain about it and take whatever (legal) steps you can to discourage it without starting a full-fledged neighbor war in the process.

18

Sounds like you need the help of Wade Blasingame, Attorney-at-law.

19

Well, if you were lucky enough to catch both the dog and the owner during one of these episodes, I’d suggest walking over with a shovel and handing it to him. Or better yet, one of those plastic baggies. I’m pretty sure that would drive the point home.

20

Surely there are laws in most towns that govern the depositing of one’s trash on other folks’ property. Is there any reason a dog’s poop should be treated differently, if you know the identity of the owner?

-P