Dog Etiquette
A Neighbor’s Dog Problem
By Daniel Muniz

After running a few errands around town, I was driving home and I had just turned down my street. It was already dark and there were plenty of people taking a walk. I live in a quiet neighborhood that is cut off from the rest of the subdivisions in the suburbs. It is a gated community where there is only way in and one way out and there is also a good size creek that the main entrance of the neighborhood has to cross over. As a result, nearly all the vehicular traffic is from the residents so it is fairly light which is why lots of people like to take walks in the evenings.

As I approached my driveway, I noticed that there was a man and his dog in my front yard. I live on a corner lot and it has a neighborhood lamp post so I could clearly see both of them even though it was nighttime. The man’s dog was taking a dump in my front yard right beside the lamp post.

I was incensed. Somehow I figured that this guy wasn’t going to clean up the mess.
 

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My first impulse was to slam the brakes (the louder the screech, the better) and pull right up to the sidewalk. I would then angrily ask the man if he was going to pick that up although I was going to use a lot of choice words if he didn’t have anything with him to put the dog crap into.

However, that flash of furor quickly passed. Being married with children, my entire outlook on life has changed. Although I am in no way perfect, I want to be able to tell my kids to “do what I do” instead of using the sham philosophy of “do as I say.” I want my children to know by example that two wrongs don’t make a right and that there is a proper way for civilized people to behave even when they are confronted with someone else’s irresponsibility. And in order for my kids to follow a good example, I have to be one so I decided to a use different tact.

Instead, I drove up my driveway and I remotely opened up the garage door and parked inside. I wanted to calmly step out of my car and walk down the driveway with the intent of confronting this guy. However, in the time that it took to park inside the garage (my wife had a new minivan so I had to be a bit careful on how I parked), the man and his dog booked out of my yard and was long gone but the dog crap was still there.

I looked across my street and I saw my neighbor standing in his driveway with a huge grin. He witnessed the incident and he told me exactly which neighbor it was because that same man had used his front yard as a place for his dog to defecate in. In fact, that particular man only lived right up the street from me and my neighbor explained to me that this guy never cleans up after his dog when goes out on his walks.

My neighbor also told me that he has observed this guy’s dog use my yard for the past few months. Now it made sense since I wondered why there were always piles of dog crap on my front yard. Now I was furious. He suggested that I pick up the dog doo and put it at the dog owner’s front doorstep.

Again, that would have been my first inclination if I was younger with no children. However, I know that that idea is not the correct way to resolve a dispute, especially with a neighbor.

In the previous neighborhood I lived in, I had a neighbor who found a pile of dog crap right at their front doorstep. They were upset because when they walked their dogs, they always pick up after them. Whoever had done this had erroneously picked the wrong house for this childish retribution.

And yes, such an act is juvenile at best and I felt that this is not the way I wanted to escalate a feud with a neighbor. I have personally known lots of people who chosen this path but that is not the way I wanted to handle it.

Now I have to admit that I felt that my best option was to put a sign in my front yard that read:

ATTENTION
Please Have Your Dog [EXPLETIVE DELETED] in Your Own Yard Instead of in Mine!

Living in a corner lot, placing a sign at just the right angle would ensure that nearly everyone living in my side of the neighborhood would see it. The only drawback would be that all the neighborhood kids would see it too. I personally didn’t think that was such a big deal because that sign is just a part of everyday life.

But as I was thinking about my own children, I didn’t want them to resort to petty tactics like that. Yes, I would have gotten my point across but it wouldn’t have been the right way for an adult to do it. And again, I have known plenty of other people who have done the exact same thing but that too was not the way I wanted to handle it.

Being a good example to my children requires me to find different ways to solve problems. It is difficult showing restraint because there are times that a natural primal instinct kicks in. And what bothered me was that I have three dogs of my own that I have taken out on lots of walks. My dogs have never taken a dump on anyone’s yard and it would be downright rude and inconsiderate to leave a pile of dog crap behind.

So I decided to do nothing for the time being. However, I will be on the lookout so if I ever see him again, I will calmly confront him and ask that he clean up his mess. And next time, I won’t park inside the garage but in the driveway so I can quickly hop out and talk to him about it.

I know that other people would have handled a situation like this a lot differently (including myself when I was younger) but my approach to how I deal with things has certainly evolved now that I have children.

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