Cleaning up after your pet.

It's not just dogs and their irresponsible owners, Sam applies to cat owners as well.  Noting ruins a nice morning like the smell of cat urine on your chairs and tires.

mikef said:

This is a relevant post for me. This spring, I head out back east to become a first time campground host. This is one question I have asked myself. I have been at this current park for the past 5 months and see this happen all the time. Most of the offenders are one night stay-overs. Maybe because they have no intention of returning? Many times I pick up others' "gifts", because I don't like disrespecting the owners' wishes. I will follow the advice  of approaching the campers when I see it and politely ask them to take care of it. I'm sure this will apply to any infraction I might witness. I don't want to be a hard a$$, but I don't want to turn a blind eye either. You can catch more bees with honey, than you can with vinegar. It should be an interesting summer.

Click to expand...

Since this is your first time, please be aware, many of the same offenders don't think their "well behaved dog" needs to be leashed either. I had a camper come in complaining about the cinder rock that our entire park is landscaped with. If you don't know, it's like red lava rock in small pieces. It's sturdy, but rough. He wasn't sure his elderly doxie would be able to walk on it. I put him closer to a area where he could walk her to the ledge..which is more grassy.
Before taking his money, I suggested another RV Park a few miles away that was paved and another I knew of that was dirt and grass. He paid and stayed anyway.
After I locked up and headed back to my site, I stopped to see if she was able to get around okay. (His dog was not leashed, UGH) He grumbled that she was having difficulty and was not pleased. Now I had to gently ask him to leash her.
He steered her back to the RV, grumbling. "C'mon Rosie, this was a bad stop. A very bad stop"...SIGH.
Fortunately the property owner was onsite that day and he agreed with me. You just can't please everyone. Above all, be polite..I guess. lol.

Recently I watched 3 tiny hairy dogs, all dragging leashes, wander into "my" yard. I full-time year round in an RV park. Most of the residents that full-time have dogs and are very courteous and we treat the spots in-between the RV's as our own. I had a guy pull in next to me and the next morning he let his little rats out, dragging leashes, to potty. He followed them around but stood in the road. I watched from my window as they crapped right in front of my side door and one even had the nerve to pee on my RV skirting. I was beyond PO'd with the pee. When I left for work I cornered him and very politely, but sternly explained to him that it will not happen again. He nodded, apologized and promised not to let them pee on the skirting again. He left a day later.

I was just floored that he stood there and watched his dog pee on my skirting?!?!?!  ???

/\  Wow.

I had to tell one lady dog walker that the potted plants her dog was peeing on were ones I had to hand carry into the house when the weather got too cold for them.

I'm a dog lover; always try to act responsibly about my own dogs.

I agree.  It only takes a few bad apples to ruin it for the rest of us responsible dog owners. 

years back we had a guy let his dog poop on our site. when he didn't go to pick it up I asked if he needed a bag, he turned away and I asked a little louder, this time several other campers heard me and stopped to listen. the third time I asked he came over and got the bag at which time I quietly told him (so only he could hear) how rude it was to not pick up the poop and that it was also against the rules and that he should really think about being a little more considerate. that embarrassed him, he took the bag, collected his poop and walked away. he was also with about 6 other people. one camper yelled thank you to him and several others laughed- they never walked on our loop again. LOL

I have a very small doggie and she has very small poops I pick everyone of those up and throw them in the trash she even expects this since that is all she has ever known. When we are walking I see others with all size dogs on and off leash I am always surprised to see how many do not carry bags with them. It also annoys me to see cats poop and pee everywhere, no one ever picks up after outside cats nor are they on leashes. All poop is nasty no matter what animal it comes from bacteria, viruses, parasites and other yucks are transmitted by this think about it next time you walk around all this is picked up on your shoes and then transferred to your floors.  Maybe this info is what the non compliant people need to know so they will understand.

We are in a long-term park that has leash and poop rules.  I ALWAYS pick up after my dog.  Even when we are off the property.  It's just rude to expect others to clean up after you, or to have to clean poop off their shoes.  I have two neighbors with dogs.  One boxer, one chihuahua mix.  Th boxer is never on a leash and I've never seen anyone pick up after him.  The little dog is always leashed and I've never seen anyone pick up after her.  Oh, well . . . nobody can say that about me.

I did scold my husband the other day.  I have the bag dispenser on my leash and when I tore a bag off, it left a little "stray" piece on the next bag.  The next day, after hubby took Bella for her morning walk, I noticed the same bag was present.  Uh, oh!  He does take her across the street and off property, but it's still right beside the road where people sometimes walk (ME!)  It's not that hard to pick up after her.  I even have one of those Litter Genies for cat litter disposal sitting right under the front of our fiver.  It makes a great doggie poop bag disposal unit.  It keeps smell contained and, when it's full, just take it to the dumpster.

Never done this myself, but I've heard it works wonders:

When you fry bacon for breakfast, save the grease.
After an inconsiderate dog owner leaves their dog's "leavings", pour bacon grease on the scat before their next lap.
The dog will clean up after itself, please be sure compliment the dog owner on how well-trained their dog is!
Dog will return to owner's home and redeposit the mess on their floor.

However, there is no guarantee that the same dog will be the next dog to come by.  That's an awful thing to happen to people who always pick up their dog' poop.

MT4Runner said:

Never done this myself, but I've heard it works wonders:

When you fry bacon for breakfast, save the grease.
After an inconsiderate dog owner leaves their dog's "leavings", pour bacon grease on the scat before their next lap.
The dog will clean up after itself, please be sure compliment the dog owner on how well-trained their dog is!
Dog will return to owner's home and redeposit the mess on their floor.

Click to expand...

If someone follows your suggestion and does something that results in giving a dog diarrhea or worse, they may be properly charged with animal cruelty. Of course, depending on the owner, they may not live long enough to be charged.

Cleaning up will always be a problem.  I am also disturbed by the people that feel their dog doesn't need to be leashed when outside.  We have to German Sheps and love walking them.  I can't tell you how many times we get charged by off leash yapping dogs.  Their owners seem to think no harm no foul.... Not the case.  Ours don't have a bad bone in them...  But when something comes charging out, off leash, who will seem to get the blame when bad situations arise?  We have had this happen too many times. 

There is a way to prevent issues with this. My seasonal does not permit dogs off the campsite. If you want to walk it you put your animal in your car and drive 5 minutes to the public dog park or 10 minutes to a nice state park of 20 minutes to a dog beach. As such Ive only had this problem once from a weekender that didnt bother reading the rules and watched as he walked his dog by then let it crap in the street right in front of my campsite without picking it up. I watched where he went then grabbed my shovel and scooped it up and walked down to his campsite and flung the poo up in the middle of his site and politely said dogs are not allowed off of your campsite and you are responsible for cleaning up after it.

I would never cause harm to the animal, Its not the dogs fault. They have to go and are only taking what opportunity their owners present them. Mine is trained to go in a specific area and I scoop it up into a small trash can I have back there with a liner in it specifically for that purpose.

I have had more trouble at home with people doing this than at the campground. I don't get the mentality where people think its OK to walk their dog to do its business on other peoples property whether they pick it up or not. The urine kills the grass and you can pick that up and no matter how hard you try you will leave behind feces, thats if you bother to pick it up at all. I have one neighbor that I don't speak to at all any longer as they were walking their dog just far enough for it to pee in another neighbors front yard leaving him dead patches then they would cross the street and my front yard got crapped on without them picking it up. I caught them in the act a few times and was polite and they came back with a bag to clean it up but I explained to them I didn't want it there in the first place so please take your dog around the corner where there are no houses. Im very anal retentive when it comes to my lawn and spend a lot of time and money maintaining it in a lush green condition. Well they continued anyhow and if I didn't catch them they just left it. Well I didn't say a word for several days, long enough that I collected a gallon ziploc baggie of their dogs feces then hung it on their front door with a note that I didn't pay $750K for a house so their dog had a place to dump. One would think that got the point across right? Wrong! What did get the point across was when I had finally had enough. I watched out the front window as their dog took a huge dump right smack in the middle of my front lawn. My blood began to boil but I waited for them to get back across the street and inside. I then walked out, scooped up the massive pile their dog deposited with a shovel and walked across the street and rang the doorbell. As soon as they opened the door I flung the contents of the shovel into their foyer  with about half of it smearing up their walls and walked off without saying a word. They haven't been back over on this side of the street since and its been almost 5 years now.

Wendy said:

When camp hosting at Desth Valley, I always carried extra 'poop' bags with me. If I saw someone's dog doing its business and the owners didn't appear ready to immediately take care of it, I would pull out a bag and cheerfully ask "Hi there. Do you need a bag?" Only once did I have a person say that he didn't 't plan on picking it up because "she's just a little dog." I said I'd rather not step in dog poop, little or big, and picked it up myself. Was hoping it shamed him into picking up the next deposit but don't know.

Click to expand...

This is what we do also, as campground hosts.  It works well 99% of the time.