Question in the title. Originated by Rahn Hortman.
Or, more precisely, are blind people given an exception to pick up laws? Or are the dogs trained to not poop except by command?
The handler (the blind person, in this case) cleans up after them. They know where the dog is and can figure out where everything is going to land by keeping their hand near the dog’s butt.
If you google your exact thread title, there’s a ton of threads on reddit, quora and even articles on sites for/about blind people.
From what I gather, there’s some workarounds as well. Training the dog to go directly into a bag and/or exemptions that allow blind people to not clean up after their dog.
“Shocking in your citation of the Cook County law about cleaning up after your dog. Why should handlers of service dogs be exempt from that? I use a service dog, and like all other service dog handlers I have ever known, I clean up after my dog.”
“The way I pick up after my dog, first of all, feel for her movement,” said Leslie, who asked me not to use her last name. “I can tell she’s moving around in circles, or sniffing, through the leash.”
Just as guide dogs are taught to guide their handler around obstacles and deal with busy environments, they are taught to toilet (pee and poop) on request. This is done by teaching our puppies two different commands, one for peeing and one for pooping. Our guide dogs use “Busy-busy” for urinating, and “Big-busy” for pooping. While out and about, the handler can use these commands to get their working dog to relieve themselves at a convenient time and place.
But, to re-iterate - while guide dogs are taught to pee and poop on command and are housebroken/toilet trained to a very high level, they are still dogs and sometimes have accidents.
Blind people are not helpless and as a general rule still have their noses intact so they can locate the problem via their working senses, at which point they can clean it up themselves or ask other people for assistance.
I work at a glorified grocery store so we see a regular parade of assistance dogs. The vast majority mange to get through the store without leaving anything behind them. When accidents occur we are happy to either provide the handler with the materials needed for clean up - which is what usually happens - or have our staff clean it up, just like we do when a human customer has a bodily waste accident, bleeds, or pukes on the floor, all of which do happen from time to time. Even before covid we had plenty of PPE to clean up “biohazardous waste”. As they say, shit happens. Sometimes literally. Honestly, we have more problems with toddlers than the dogs and often the problem isn’t the toddler it’s the parent(s). (It makes me angry when a kid keeps saying “Mommy I have to pee. Daddy I have to pee” endlessly until suddenly the kid is pissing on their own feet, which I have seen happen more than once. Holy crap, people, the kid is telling you they need help, don’t yell at them for being human. Sorry, workplace rant now ending.)
My experience in the past with blind co-workers who used seeing eye dogs is that the blind person is perfectly capable of cleaning up after their dog.
Fundamentally, blind people are not helpless. We have a blind neighbor we know pretty well, and it’s amazing how much he’s able to do by himself.
Note that at some level of animal “misbehavior”—threatening aggression, pooping in the store or restaurant or cab (depending on nastiness of proprietor)–the protection offered by the ADA for free passage of people with service dogs is no longer binding, meaning the disabled person can be given the bum’s rush.
And, FTR and in my experience, training a dog to stop sniffing around and get busy peeing or pooping is a damn lengthy process.
In dog shows handlers sometimes insert a little something mini-chopstick but smaller in the dog or bitch’s butt in the area for the dogs to relieve themselves, to make sure no accidents happen in the ring