Dog s**tting in garden

[Londonwriter]

We’re lucky enough to have a (narrow) 50ft garden during lockdown.

My DH has been allowing our dog to s*t in the garden. Everytime my three-year-old DS goes to play in the garden, which is currently his main outdoor recreation as the playground is closed, there is at least one or two cold, dry c*ps hidden in the grass.

My DH says that he feels sorry for the dog because, although we are using our one ‘exercise’ trip each day to walk the dog, the dog can’t manage. He says he doesn’t know the dog is c***g in the garden because he often wants to go in the dark.

I’m sick and tired of it. He’s pooing twice a day (on each trip out) and then, it appears, in addition, he c*d six times in the garden over the Easter weekend. I’m worried that my DS gets sick from the garden being a dog toilet. When my DH isn’t working from home, the dog manages perfectly fine on a short run in the morning, a brief walk around 4pm and a further brief walk around midnight.

I told my DH to try to get the dog to c**p in one place only, but apparently this is not feasible given he’s working full-time and we have a colicky baby.

AIBU? DH thinks I’m a hygiene Nazi and it’s fine provided the c**p is picked up.

When dogs poo in public though there are still germs where it has sat, surely? It’s not nice to know that when you have an inquisitive toddler.

Where is the Covid19 coming in to play?

And as for turning gardens into shitholes? The problem in my garden is caused by cats. Not a dog.

The person who is right is the one who goes out into the garden with the dog and picks up immediately regardless of the time of day. We have 3 dogs and we pick up after them and sluice away urine as soon as it happens then it doesn't smell.
Your h is in the wrong for not doing this and you are for expecting the dog to hold it when it needs to go..

You can say crap and shit on here.

I would fence off a piece a of the garden for your ds, as it is so long.

Not a lot you can do, other than pick it up yourself .

I was agreeing with you because I thought you meant you were upset your husband wasnt picking it up and your son was playing amongst it. however realised toward the end you dont want the dog pooing in the garden full stop..you are unreasonable for that

random thing to say and completely untrue. Have you read "every single bit of behavioural science on canine learning" or are you making stuff up to try and make a point?

Not that random.

Yes, I've read a fair amount of it. I've spent the last five years formally studying it through various diploma and degree levels.

The bits specifically that I think relevant to your approach of leading a dog to a poo and saying 'No':

• dog's do not equate the sight of a shit with having done the shit some time earlier. Taking your dog to the poo is ineffective regardless of your actions when you get there, because he doesn't know he did the poo. Approx 3 seconds is the average amount of time a dog can link an action with a result. If a dog did something more than 3 seconds ago, they are very unlikely to link your reaction to their action. In fact, in reading hundreds (maybe thousands) of studies I have never come across a dog who could link over a longer time period than about 30 seconds.

• even if the dog COULD remember doing the poo, it is unlikely he will think your reaction is due to the location of the poo vs doing the poo at all.

• saying 'No' in itself does not work. Dogs learn through reinforcement or punishment (aversives). Your 'no' is not a reinforcement unless you have spent time building an association between it and something nice, such as food. So it must be either a neutral stimulus (doesn't matter either way to the dog) or a punishment. You think it puts the dog off pooing in that location again so you think it's a punishment. If it's a punishment then the dog will associate that punishment with whatever is happening at the time - presumably being led by the collar into the garden. He won't learn anything about pooing, he may learn something bad about collar-leading.

In a nutshell, these are the fundamentals of canine learning upon which all else is built.

Maybe the dog has increased his pooing from 2-6 a dat due to bleach poisoning

What made you get a dog, you also sound jealous of your DH and the dogs relationship. How can you correlate your DH working from home, walking the dog more often (which you don't seem to like) and the dogs increased need to poo 💩?

This is a weird post!

You sound like novice dog owner. Ridiculous post! Pick up the fucking poo yourself and stop being so dramatic. I have had dogs all my life and of course they crap in the garden. You keep the grass short and you pick it up very regularly. Your DH must think wtf when you discuss this! Baffling!

Yes, you can't exactly stop foxes / badgers doing their business everywhere, we all grew up with it and kinda turned out ok? So I think the next generation will fare the same...

My 13 year old rescue would not respond

It’s trained the exact same way as anything else would be.
No different to teaching ‘sit’ or ‘shake’ or anything else.
Dogs aren't untrainable just because they are adults.

Whose dog does 5 or 6 poos a day? How much are you feeding them?! Is it a breed thing?

If any of mine started doing that I'd take them to the vet. I've had dogs all my life and never known one which does more than 3 at most unless they're ill. 2 is normal in my experience.

@Koshkatt Just to clarify, I don’t have symptomatic COVID, but I live in a crowded area with lots of flats, and it feels rude to use public space to exercise with a dog when I have a garden, when that’s the only space other people have to exercise and get fresh air. Part of successful social distancing is assuming that anyone could have COVID, even if they’re not showing symptoms yet (because it can spread through asymptomatic people). No one else is going to exercising in my front garden (hopefully)

@cherrybunx0 I’ve had two dogs and neither normally pooed(s) in the garden. Like a couple of other people on here, we take them out a lot, they poo on walks, and the rest of the time, they don’t seem to need to poo. They usually poo in the same spots, which - for our current dog - is roadside gutters, in thick hedges, and next to the entrance to a local park. None of these are places where there are going to be young children playing.

This is a situation created for us, seemingly, by lockdown, and I didn’t know how to handle it. I had no idea whether:

1. It was reasonable to let a dog poo all over an area where my preschooler is playing (sounds like it’s pretty common);
2. Whether having to pick up multiple piles of old, cold c*p after my DH was playing with my DS in the garden over the Easter weekend was reasonable, and whether I was right to be angry at DH (sounds like INBU and my DH should take responsibility for the c*ps done on his watch); and,
3. How to deal with our poor dog who is stuck with us in lockdown (sounds like some combination of ‘pooing in front garden’, ‘being trained to poo in a fenced-off spot in the back garden and washing with water’, and ‘checking guidelines to see if it’s okay to take the dog up and down our road more than twice a day’).

Keep your grass short, pick up the poo regularly and use a watering can to wash over the area, if necessary. Don't use bleach! A horse poo picker makes life easier (google it and you will find loads for sale on line). Also, suggest you split your daily exercise so that each of you gets to walk the dog, therefore giving the dog two walks a day.

Dogs shit. There is no reason on earth that your dog should not shit in your garden. Indeed, it's much nicer for everyone else if it does.

@Mythologies

You've clearly got a very well trained dog if it only poos in the gutter.

As for the rest, those of us who's dog goes in the garden usually do exactly the same, with the added benefit that the yard gets regularly disinfected, which is more than can be said for the gutter after your dog has been.

@lockheart I have no idea why he’s doing so many poos. @thriftyhen We are doing two walks - me doing the morning and husband doing the evening. He’s doing a huge poo on my walk, a huge poo on my husband’s walk (apparently)... and yet the garden is also full of poo.

It’s not diarrhoea, it’s fully-formed logs, so he’s not sick, and I do wonder if he poos more now my DH is wfh . I'm normally the only person wfh and he normally only does the two poos a day. When I take him out during the daytime, he normally just pees .

Try closing off a section of the garden and getting it to use only that. Or only let it on the patio where its easy to pick up. My dogs arent allowed on the actual garden but only on the path so can pick up after them. But in my dog experience, they need to do more than just on the walk. Mine sometimes go morning, night, walk and a couple of wees in between too.

so that same dog knows what 'have a wee' means and will pee if he needs to on that command - or is that also against "every single bit of behavioural science on canine learning"?

Purely in the spirit of knowledge sharing, this follows the fundamentals.

Cue - Action - Consequence

A dog receives a number of cues that weeing is appropriate. Those cues can be natural (the need to urinate) but over time he can also learn to link other cues (you saying "have a wee" or the feel of grass under his feet).

He wees.

That action is rewarded with the lovely feeling of relief that comes after we wee.

This all works because everything is immediate. That's why and how the dog learns. He has repeated or intensive experience of receiving a cue, doing soemething and getting the result.

What he cannot do is something like:

• you tell him to sit
• he sits
• he walks off
• thirty minutes later you give him a treat for sitting

In that example, he will never link sitting with the reward (reinforcer). But that's the scenario you set up when:

• he poos
• he gets the reward of the relief of having a poo
• you notice some time later and take him back to the poo
• you deliver a punishment

By the time you punish it is too late for any learning but it is also and lacking in the additional information the dog needs to determine it is the LOCATION that is 'wrong'.

Plus the dog has already had the consequence for pooing - that lovely sense of relief. So you're punishment, even if it was to work, needs to be worse to the dog than the reward is nice. You need something more severe for the 'No' to work. Which is unethical for a variety of reasons, mostly around punishing a dog for a bodily function that it must do.

Also, is this dog the sole responsibility of your DH or is it a family pet?

You’re being ridiculous! Poor dog😢Give it a cuddle. Then stop being so melodramatic and pick up the bloody poo

When we had a dog I bought a little bit of wire netting and sectioned most of the garden off so that our dog could only go out unsupervised in one area. Easier to pick up and you keep the other area clean for the kids. Obviously dog still played on the larger area when we were directly with him though!

Is the dog spitting and clapping? I dont understand.

I also haven't rtft so assume no others have asked about the **ing

The poo needs picking up as soon as it has been done. It isn’t hard. Supervise the dog when it is outside and pick up any mess it makes.

All dogs should be trained to shit in their own gardens. Guide dogs are.

Keep your dog and its shit in your garden, not share it with the rest of us.