To think that expecting someone to wipe the pavement with wet wipes after you dog has done a poo is weird?

[FiveFarthings]

Just now DH and I were walking with DD and our small spaniel. We are walking along the pavement and the dog decides he needs a poo just in front of a garden wall of a house. The gate of the house was about two foot down from us and there was a woman painting the gate who watched us.

The dog does his business, quite close to the wall, on a pile of pine needles. I pick up what I can, including a handful of pine needles, and there is a small smear of poo on the pavement which I wipe with the bag as best I can but some gets left behind (the smear was about a thumb length).

We carry on walking and suddenly the woman is running after us saying do we have wet wipes to clean up the smear of poo! We said no and she said well you’ve left quite a mess! I just said sorry I did the best I could as his poo was a bit soft today, and she stormed off saying sarcastically oh I’ll clean it up then.

I’m just a bit baffled. Do people carry wet wipes to wipe the pavement in case their dog does a slightly runny poo? I have lots of friends with dogs and they don’t do it, and have never seen anyone with a dog doing this. Sometimes if the dog does a runny poo and I can’t get it all, I will cover it with leaves/grass if there is any to hand. If I knew my dog had diarrhea for example, then I would probably carry kitchen towel or similar in case he made a mess, but I wouldn’t carry something like wet wipes on every walk.

I’m not sure why she was so upset. The poo was on a public pavement, it wasn’t in front of her gate and it was so close to the wall in the pile of pine needles that there was no chance of anyone stepping in it, and even if they did it was such a tiny smear it probably wouldn’t even transfer to a shoe!

I am a responsible dog owner and always pick up after my dog but AIBU for thinking her request was a bit weird?

Definitely not being unreasonable there OP...

Most of the dog owners i meet along the highways and byways of the Tamar Valley just leave the poo where it is, after all it's only a lump of shit and those little black plastic bags are bad for the environment.

The world's gone mad....you did your best. The end.

It makes me wonder what the fuck humans are doing with their lives.

YANBU you did the best you could - there's loads of dirt and muck outside including poo and wee from wild creatures. The rain will wash away any residue.

This kind of incident makes me grateful to live in the countryside where we don't have to worry so much about where our dogs poo.

Fucking hell do you lot live in Stepford? I’m coming to eat my dinner off your pavements tomorrow- sounds like some of them are cleaner than my bloody kitchen floor. Water bottles, detergent, SLUICING THE PAVEMENT. FML some of you lot need to find a hobby that doesn’t involve washing a notoriously unclean part of your neighbourhood. You did get the memo about wildlife needing to shit too didn’t you?!

Honestly whenever I walked the dog (DD does it now) I always carried wipes or tissues to clean up poo smears. I don't expect everyone to do it, but yes I did it.

I take some kitchen roll with me as well as a poo bag and would do my best, but if there is a smear left,tough. The rain will wash it away.

Even as a practically feral little scrote in the late 1980s, I knew that when walking the dog, you never let it shit on the pavement, grass verges or right beside somebody's wall - at the first sign, you moved the dog over to the gutter, then put the result in a bag.

So yabu for letting the dog shit there in the first place.

@ALoadOfTwaddle
*I take a portable pressure washer and some zooflora to make sure the pavements sparkle after my dog defecates.

Wipes, indeed. Amateurs.*

Brilliant
She was a nutter.
Fox shit, diesel particulates, chewing gum - pavements are never "clean". OP cleaned up and left a tiny smear. That's not "disgusting" , it's just "outdoors". I'd have put dirt or pine needles over it as, if it's just a smudge, they'll stop it getting on anyone's shoes or buggy wheels and it will degrade quickly.

It's absolutely absurd. Totally and completely absurd that humans, humans! run about the back of dogs picking up their shit. It's mental.

Ive seen lots of people round here who have a water bottle and who do squirt water on left over mess to get rid of it. Makes sense to me. It's obviously not nice to leave any dog poo on the streets if you can help it - a slosh of water would certainly improve matters generally.

Back when I was a young 'un nobody picked up dog shit, in fact we'd stick ice lolly sticks into the hard turds and fling them at each other.

The Great Dog Shit War of the 1962.

Well I don't agree with wet wipes but I do think you should carry water with you to squirt it away. In her defense, When we just bought our house I found a dog poo in front of our house daily. It stopped after we spent a full day doing up the front garden ourselves so I think it was a hate thing against the previous owner but it was really a pain in the ass to clean someone elses dog poo away every bloody day! I don't have a dog because I don't want to deal with this shit.

could you consider attaching some sort of trough to your dogs backside. or perhaps consider teaching it to shit in a potty on command and carry a screen around so no one has to witness an animal.....being an animal. Crying at the thought of PP's neighbour chasing their dogs around and popping paper towels underneath lest the grass gets contaminated if they forget their bottle of disinfectant

I appreciate people saying I shouldn’t let my dog poo outside her house but he was on an extendy lead lagging behind and he’d already started by the time I’d realized he’d stopped walking.

I agree I wouldn't want dog poo outside my house either but as it happens it was right at the base of the wall at the junction of her wall and a field wall, not in front of her gate or driveway or anything like that. It was honestly the tinest bit of poo, not great heaping smears of it all over the pavement, and it was right at the base of the wall, not anywhere people would be walking or stepping.

It was just her over the top reaction to the small amount of poo and suggestion of wipes that I found odd that was all.

AVA, sensitive. Skin and stomach, is your friend, we had a similar problem.
www.petsathome.com/shop/en/pets/ava-veterinary-approved-adult-sensitive-dog-food-15kg
No more runny poop...ever

Lol some people are so fucking precious. It’s the footpath FFS not her bloody dinner plate

But if you squirt it with water ... where does it go? Surely then there's just pooey water on the pavement, even if you can't see it? I'm not sure that's any better than leaving a small smear

Into the gutter? Where else?

a smear of dogpoo for crying out loud there are buckets of horse poo all over the roads and tracks here, when it rains the smear will go

Having dog poo on your shoe/ pram wheels is absolutely disgusting so yes, you should be clearing it all away and not leaving smears of your dogs poo on the pavement.

Agree with ThirstyGhost.
Some people wont be happy unless dogs no longer exist.
Until then, if we can stop dogs shitting, barking, pissing, walking, sniffing, get them off our streets, make them walk only in confined fenced in areas between certain times, and generally be as invisible as possible, this will do.
In the meantime, cats have free reign to go where they want, shit where they want, come and go as they please, because of course, cats are the only animal that wants its freedom. No other animal on the planet would quite like to roam like a cat does.

And yet I have to put up with cat shit in my vegetable garden.

Just tell her you were on your way home and you'll be back around with your fire hose to clean it up in a minute!

Geesh. What about people spitting big blobs of snot and puking on pavements? You don't get anyone asking them to clean it up with wipes.