My dog is very old (15) and quite often gets diarrhea 
Anyway at teatime I took him out and got caught by the Environmental wardens. They asked me if my dog had just done the toilet and had I picked it up. I said yes he has and no I haven?t because he has diarrhea and I can?t pick it up (without being too yucky it's almost water at the moment). They then asked if I had a vet's certificate to say he has diarrhea, and I said no, because he gets like this quite often if I was to take him to vet every time it would cost a fortune to be told to give him rice and chicken for the next few days and any other time I've taken him I've never been given a certificate. I even showed them the roll of poo bags in my pocket, as I always clean up after him, when possible, and not that it makes any difference but I take him to a piece of waste ground round the corner.
My neighbour has said she will even go to court to verify that I was cleaning the path at just after 7 this morning as he didn?t make it any further (we live in a tenement, so no garden)
Believe me it's no fun getting woke up at 2am to take him out or waking up and standing in a puddle of poo
Anyway they gave me a fixed penalty (fair enough) for 40 pounds (sorry my pound sign doesn't work) but it says on it I can request a court hearing. So do you think I should just pay the fine, or go to court as I couldn?t pick it up and risk getting fined even more?
I think it's upsetting me more as over the past few months his diarrhea has been getting more frequent and I know we don?t have much more time together but apart from arthritis and being almost deaf he's quite healthy but old. The last time he was at the vet (September) she told me to prepare for possibly our last Christmas together but this was due to old age rather than illness