This blog post is inspired by a recent CBC News article that was asking dog owners and dog sitters if scoop law enforcement was a problem in their local area. The concerning part of the article to me was the amount of hostility some scoop enforcing dog owners had towards violators. The article cites how one council member wanted to raise the fine for failing to scoop after your dog from $118 to a whoping $1576 per violation. Another colorful character used night vision goggles to observe dogs and their owners. This vigilante-type attitude of dog owners violating scoop laws continued into a rant of comments following the article. I think the most common quote came from a very armchair attitude of “dogs are not the problem, dog owners are the problem.” I found all these comments very negative and not very helpful when looking at the larger picture of dogs and their “business.”
My point is that most good dog owners and good dog sitters that follow the scoop laws just accept people are going to leave behind poop for some reason or another every now and again. Poop has been around for millions of years and left by millions of animals and you know what? Humans have managed to survive and do pretty well for themselves. Rather than lashing out at scoop “violators” with hostility in person or online, take the time to talk with them and explain why it is so important to clean up after dogs. These five minutes of active engagement alone are enough to change the attitude of both the intentional and unintentional scoop law violators in my experience. Also, if worst comes to worst you could always just clean up the poop yourself. After all, ignoring a problem even though you could fix it is just a continuation of the original problem, right?
Post by Rover-ite Danny