This question may have been posed before. I can’t find it.
Fairly frequently on my dog walks, I find a dog poop bag on the side of the trail. Sometimes more than one. Sometimes I come across a gathering of poop bags (not sure what the collective noun is), obviously from the same person. Just last week, I came across three identical poop bags, carefully placed on a park bench 50 feet from a garbage can.
Why are these people doing this?
Some theories I’ve explored with other dog owners:
They think they’ll come back later to pick it up. (doing a back and forth on the trail). This does not work for the collective of identical poop bags.
They think that it’s the job of the park employee (or someone… the designated dog poop bag collector)
They think it’s a compostable dog poop bag, so it will naturally vanish into the ecosystem
It’s icky and they don’t want to touch it anymore (then why bag it?)
The poop fairy takes care of it
They just don’t care (then why bag it?)
They think the act of bagging it makes it disappear
I see this on trails I walk my dog on fairly regularly. My guess is they feel they have done their job, and if there isn’t a trashcan within 20 feet of where they are standing they just leave it on the ground. Either that or they are planning to pick it up on their way back and throw it away. IOW, I think they are lazy and stupid. BTW, I sometimes pick up other dog bags and walk the 20 feet to the trashcan for them, so I reinforce their bad behavior.
Also my bug bear. I mean it’s lazy and inconsiderate to not clean up after your dog. But why would anyone expend effort to be even more inconsiderate!?! I mean it sucks to to find dog poop in some remote beauty spot, but it sucks way more to find dog poop AND a plastic bag in a remote beauty spot!
If you can’t be arsed to take your poop bags home with you just don’t clean up after your dog it’s better for everyone.
This is it, IMHO. Nothing makes me more stabby while walking my dog than finding full effing poop bags left for someone else to deal with. Some of them even have a knot tied on them, so the person knows what to do. A-holes, one and all. I’d rather you just leave your dog’s shit where it is without the bag, moron. I dont fall for the whole “oh, I’ll be back to get it later.” Bullshit! Take it with you now!
About a week or two ago, I came home intending to throw out the bag in my trash — and realized I had dropped it somewhere.
I’m retired and have time, so I retraced steps and found it at the far end of my walk, in a gazebo where I had stopped to rest, about a half mile away.
If I had to go to work, I wouldn’t have had time. Instead, I might have made up for it by cleaning up someone else’s mess, maybe the next day.
If you think dog owners are bad now, it is nothing like it was, say, 60 years ago, when people let their dogs run free.
But we’ve gone on lots of hikes where it’s ‘customary’ to leave the bag off the trail and grab it on the way back down. Does everybody who leaves a bag (plan to) retrieve it on the way down? No. Because people.
So many of us grab our bag and another on the way down.
And sometimes, one of The Good People grabbed OUR full bag on THEIR way down, so we pay it forward and grab somebody else’s full bag.
[Which leads people to wonder if somebody thought ill of them and felt obligated to pick up after them – IOW, were WE presumed to be the assholes that time??]
In the neighborhood, though, where Sam and I clock our miles, it really is just disgusting how many piles and/or full and tied bags just sit there. And they’re there the following day, too.
The trail thing – incidentally – has a logic to it. You can bag and double bag and triple bag the poop, but it’ll generally still stink up your pack to high heaven, and if you tie it on the outside of your pack, everybody smells it.
I’m … literally … dying … because of shitty [NPI], narcissistic, irresponsible dog owners, so this one looms a bit large in my head.
When we walked our dog on a trail and we were just starting, we might leave it to pick up on the way back. But 50 feet from a trash can? Never. And on the park bench? Double never. I’d go with the stupid and inconsiderate vote.
We often ran our dog in the park behind the elementary school across the street, and some people bagged the poop and just tossed it there - and there were plenty of trash cans all over the place.
We don’t bag poo.
I walk the dogs on our property. I carry a spade in my jangly accoutrement that always travel on the paths with me and if any one is rude and does their business on the path I dispense with it with the spade.
But I hate hate hate visitor dogs who poo on the yard. The human always gets a Walmart sack and finger point to the burn barrel. And if I feel generous, a wet wipe.
More than a few have looked askance at me.
The dog park where I take my dog is a one way, to the lake & return to parking area. People will typically bag poop and leave it to collect on the way back. Occasionally there are those that forget to pick up their bag but for the most part all is good. There’s a bin, provided by the town, by the entrance gate to deposit the bags.
There are also a few that don’t bother at all but that’s by far the minority.
My dogs (approx 75lbs) generally poop in my back yard. It usually accumulates 2-3 days before I do a pickup. I might step in poop once/year. It makes me wonder about those who’d have you believe that walking down a sidewalk and stepping in dog poo is to the point of nearly unavoidable.
Those that don’t pick up after their dogs are jerks and probably lousy dog parents to boot, but there’s far more serious issues going on around us to be concerned about than a bit of dog shit, starting with all the garbage/litter that humans leave behind.
But my point is that the dog poop in bags IS INDEED the litter that humans leave behind, particularly when left on a park bench. The minority, sure, but WHY? Are they simply assholes?
I have, only once, done this. I planned a long trail run, not a loop, so when my dog did his usual giant poo in the middle of the path, I cleared it up in a biodegradable bag and hid it under a rock.
It is not fun running with a swinging bag of shit in your hand…
Then two days later I was walking the dog in the same area, retrieved the bag and took it away for disposal.
Dinsdale nailed it. I live in a beach town and there is an athletic field very nearby. Beach walkers bag their dog’s poop and then leave it at the entranceway. On the steps, top of the bulkhead wherever that isn’t a trash can. The park walkers bag the poop and leave on top of the wood receptacle that the trash and recycling bins are in. There must be something going on that I’m not aware of. These bags are less than a foot from the hole in top of the bin.
A bit off topic but we have people walking dogs on these long, retractable leashes. They let the dog out into our yard for the full length of the leash to do their duty. Its funny that they don’t do it when we are standing outside but the evidence is there from when we were not or when they didn’t see us. I’m considering getting cameras and then retuning the package to the windshield of their cars with a little note.
A friend of mine was a big, scary looking dude. Think stereotypical biker. Huge guy.
He observed someone allowing their dog to shit in his yard. He was unhappy about it, as he’d been finding the occasional pile for weeks.
He ran out and confronted the man. Hard. The guy swore he usually picked up his dog’s poop, but had forgotten his bags. He said he’d go home and get a bag, but biker guy said no, he had to take it NOW.
The guy eventually picked up the shit barehanded and was allowed to leave.
Awesome! I’m neither big or scary looking but if you ae going to be sneaky about letting your dog crap in my yard, I will be just as sneaking in returning the package.
