Dog shitting in my garden?

[GoldChainBeneath]

My living room faces the street and the pavement is about a car length away. Working in there this morning and noticed a woman on the pavement just stood staring at my house.

I walked over to the window and her dog was taking a shit in my front garden. Knocked on the window and she just shrugged in an apologetic way.

Is this quite a normal thing for all dog owners that you’ll let your dog shit anywhere? I’ve never owned a dog.

Dogs shouldn't go to the toilet on anyones garden except their own

Its not nice, but if the dog starts shitting, you cant stop it. I would have apologised if my dog had done that. I hope she picked it up

Not normal. Trouble is once one starts, they all want to go in the same spot! Hopefully this is just a one off though as most owners won't their dogs actually go into your garden.

Your initial post sounds like she didn't care and didn't pick it up. I can understand her shrug because once they start it's not like you can plug them up to stop them. However, unless she's a brand new dog owner she should have an idea of where her dog prefers to poop (e.g. on grass, on lead, off lead etc) so keep them off people's gardens and it's rude to just let your dog wander wherever regardless of the poop.

She picked it up so I’d be happy with that. Cat owners don’t pick up.

No, I taught my dogs to stick to the pavement not wonder onto peoples drives/grass/paths, not that they had a choice being on lead anyway.

My dog has done this once and I was really embarrassed. She’s normally great and i can tell when shes about to do it and she does it on public grass. One time, she suddenly veered off course on to someone’s front lawn and immediately started having a big dump. It was so quick but I couldn’t do much about it other than forcibly drag her mid shit (which I didn’t). I just cleared it up and got away quick, fortunately unseen.

I don’t let my dog poo in other people’s gardens. Also, if she does poo while we’re out I pick it up and put in a bin. Our older dog, PTS a few weeks ago, always pooed and we always have bags to clear it.

I have a dog and if he even moves to go onto a garden/ assume a pooping position I pull him away

I sit, watch telly, etc, in my rear sitting room so wouldn't see, not that I would be looking out of the window anyway. To be honest I couldn't care less about a dog weeing although I've not seen a dog off lead around here; I wouldn't be pleased if one did a poo on my drive or lawn but I daresay I wouldn't know until some time later and hopefully would not tread in it.

Cat owners, yes. Dog, not so much.

I'd have gone out there and told her not to let her dog onto my private property

To be fair, our Akita's a bit sneaky like that - she won't give any indication that there's a need, but (very) occasionally we'll be walking past a garden without a fence and she'll swing herself round so that even if we have her on a short leash, her butt's on the garden and....toilet time. Once a dog's assumed the position, it's basically a fait accomplit and there's nothing you can do about it without making things worse (dragging the dog will likely mean ruining the grass/flowers/etc).

We tend to avoid those gardens these days, but on the odd occasion that it's happened I'll always clean it up and knock on the door to apologise profusely. It's seriously bad form to just shrug and walk off, even if you've cleaned it up.