AIBU to not clear up after my dog?

[NormalityBites]

There's a sign on a gate on the next street to me which tells dog owners they have to clean up their dogs URINE on the hedge next to the gate (apparently the dogs have a liking for the hedge specifically) because the owner has children who play in the garden and it's extremely unhygenic and dangerous. (That's what it says)

Granted I have a particularly dense old dog who tends to stop DEAD and do his business the INSTANT he feels the need (including when you're in the middle of the road ) and there's no stopping him....you can pull him on and he'll waddle along still doing it until he has finished which makes even more of a mess....!

But I don't see how I can clean up dog urine? Or stop him from urinating on the hedge? I can drag him away from the hedge but he will wee all the way. I can't really avoid walking past the hedge. I live in fear of him weeing on it and the home owner coming out.

I'm not advocating for dog urine as an attractive or beautifully scented liquid, I know it's pretty yuck. But surely a large amount of gardens, parks....wherever up and down the country are regularly doused in the amber nectar. Including my own garden. Where children play!

AIBU not to hover under my dog with a plastic bottle and rubber glove every time we go out? Or perhaps a mop and bucket?

I hate people like that, same as people who have signs asking you not to park outside their house when it is on a free parking street. I would be tempted to take my dog AND have a pee myself while I was there!

Silly signs? What silly signs?

Don't know about England, but in Scotland it is actually illegal to let your hedge overhang the public footway. Hedges ought to be cut back to the edge of property boundary. It's in the Roads (Scotland) Act 1984 and local authorities have to send out letters to offenders every summer warning them to cut their hedge back. If they don't do it within 28 days, the council can go do it themselves. We usually send some road workers with the sort of saw used to cut open the road, and they butcher the hedge.

I think washing dog pee off a hedge is both anal and impossible. Luckily for me, I live in the middle of nowhere and don't even have to pick up poop - dog shits in woods/fields, no one cares. It is bliss compared to walking dog in town.

TooImmature - Do you know the rules on dogs poohing rurally? As I mentioned earlier, we have a moany man who has moved two horses onto a field where lots of people walk their dogs, and he is going apeshit about dogshit. There used to only be one or two horses, but the fields have been divided and are now 4, with two or three horses on each bit (too many in my humble opinion) and this chap is making everyone's life a misery. If my dog craps on the path, I pick it up, if he has run off across the field I am not straying off the footpath to go and find it. Not sure what my rights are though.

A sign telling folk not to let dogs pee on hedges. Now I've seen it all.

As my nan would have said, it's good for the kids anyway. Builds up immunity

"If my dog craps on the path, I pick it up, if he has run off across the field I am not straying off the footpath to go and find it."

You should, and the dog should be on the footpath with you - not loose in a field of livestock, crapping all over the grazing land.

Fair enough if a dog goes on the side of a country path and you can flick it into the undergrowth, well away from anywhere it might be trodden on - better there than in a plastic bag! - but in the situation you've described you must pick it up.

BTP - we've never been able to establish if it's public right of way, despite numerous attempts. We think it's access only, neighbourhood think it's a handy shortcut.

Damned annoying, though, having a bisected garden. Stupid developers.....

God my dog wee's everywhere specifically up the front of peoples houses, it's what dogs do. I always clear up his poo and take a bag with me, but never thought that his weeing would be a problem. Maybe I should take water too, take me an hour to spray everywhere he pisses.