Dog Walking Rant

Thanks for bringing up this subject lifetime2. My 2 cents about the baggies is the plastic bags that you get from the grocery store work well and are free. My personal favorite are the little blue bags that come in a roll in the baby department. They are used to put disposable diapers in when you are out and about. The best thing about them is they are scented and not see through. I keep them in my beach bag and also use them to pick up trash and butts that I find on the beach.

limetime2 - absolutely agree! My poor husband has to hear me complain about this frequently! We've temporarily moved into an apartment between renting out our home and our one-way ticket to STX. The apartment has these nice stands around the property that have a box dispensing those great little bags for cleaning up after the dogs and a trash can on the bottom. They make it so easy to clean up after your dogs yet I've seen people let their dogs go right in front of the trash can and not pick it up! They didn't even have to bring their own bags or walk more than two feet with the bags but the still don't clean up!!! So frustrating!

dougtamijj - I'll be looking for those blue bags at K-Mart. I buy green ones when I go stateside from the PetCo stores and they come in scented rolls, but I often use the ones from produce too cause I do'nt get stateside often enough. Like you, I try to pick up trash and other things that are nasty on the beach and either take them to the dumpster or at least get them out of the water line. This week I got two plastic waterbottles, a two foot square piece of fish netting and some blue tarp.

goalusvi - I've thought about putting up a friendly sign at the beginning of the beach and getting baggies donated from Plaza (they've donated before) but I'm sure someone will complain if I put up a public notice board. Maybe I'll try it anyway. There is a trash can right there and a post in the ground would be pretty easy to do.

Its just annoying to me to see this happening cause I know the next step is going to be forbidding dogs on the beach - which I would really miss.

Oh.. on the bright side, the turtles are certainly actively nesting. Every morning there are new signs of egg laying. Supervised pets on the beach pose no threat to the turtle nests, its the wild dogs at Sandy Point that are a problem there.

They have the green bags in the pet section at K-Mart.

My favorite bags are the Oops I Pooped biodegradable bags....they aren't free, but I always felt weird about putting something biodegradable into something that would keep it from going back to the earth. But then again, I would rather pick it up than have it sit on the beach, road, yard, etc.

Hi limetime2,

I'm totally on your wavelength with this issue, but let me ask a question (maybe just out of stupidity): if folks just buried the poop under a foot of sand, wouldn't the problem be gone for all practical purposes. I'm thinking that before anyone had a chance to accidentally dig it up, it would probably have been "recycled". Granted, if this is a popular beach I wouldn't advise this form of recycling. But, it would be better than just leaving the poop on display.

In my community (near a small lake in Virginia), we walk our dog, and always carry our own bags. But, the community placed two bag posts and trash cans around the lake a few years ago. Now, a few months ago they placed another two. So, there is no chance that you can't get to a bag to clean up after your dog. I'm sure that folks without dogs grumble that they're subsidizing folks who do have dogs (and I agree, and would gladly donate to the cost of the posts/bags/trash cans - even though I always bring my own), but it is such an easy, cheap way to send the right message, and make it easy to clean up! Do you think this approach would work on the beach that you like (I'm not suggesting that you pay for it; I'm wondering if this approach would be well received by the locals)?

ENGRMP... actually several of my fellow dog walkers think that burying is an option. It's true that the waves and tide will probably take care of the problem overnight, but in the meantime someone may be in for a nasty surprise and once they do we can be assured of some heavy anti-beach-dog attitude. This is a popular beach and burying isn't usually deep (use barefoot to dig hole, somehow push offending pile into hole without getting it on your foot, cover)... out of sight..... but that was way more work than picking up. And, that's actually worse for Joe Beachgoer who sits down with his beach blanket and wiggles his toes unsuspectingly into the sand. Yuk. Or what about those kids building a sand castle. Yuk. At least if it was not buried you'd see it before you started playing in the sand.

So... I'm for picking it up. I just pick it up and put the knotted bag down right there, continue my walk, and pick it up on the way back. As long as you have a baggie its a piece of cake and actually easier than the burying thing. Sadly, this is looked at as really odd behavior here and even the people I walk with think I'm nuts. I'm brave talking about it here but with them I'm trying to lead by example and so far its not really working... :0 ... I need to be a better nagger. 🙂

Stjohnjulie ... I'm with you on the biodegradable baggie. But, sadly, most people aren't going to want to pickup at all let alone if it costs them a buck to do so. I'll look for them for myself tho. And I thought maybe brown paper bags would work too but they don't.

There were 9 dogs being walked on the beach this morning while I was there! It was a big dog beach day! So fun, all the dogs looked so happy to be out and exercising. Beautiful morning on the beach!

(Except there was a lot of trash. There was actually a used pamper in the parking area, along with water bottles, beer bottles, and assorted other nasty things.A friend and I may do a trash pick-up walk later this afternoon. We just can't stand it. )

Limetime2... I'm totally with you on this. I agree, if I have a dog in STX I will most definitely pick up after my dog. I'm just not a nagger (my wife might differ with me on this), so I tend to just do my own thing and hope that it just rubs off on others. But, I also share your worry about closing the beaches to dogs... that would be a real bummer... they love the beach! I also do my own community pick up from time to time... I figure that I now have time to clean up after others, and it maybe pays back a bit for all of the times that I probably littered when I was younger.

It's not just the beach, though. People walk their dogs on the road in front of my house and have no problems letting their dogs do their thing on my lawn (or the parched stuff that's left). It hits me as a lack of courtesy. I don't have a dog any more, but would they like it if I did my thing on their lawns?

You are right... if they won't pick up, it's a pretty fat chance they will spend the money on the bags! I guess that "note" was more for the rest of us who care enough to pick it up in the first place. On St. John it is hard to find a beach that a dog is welcome on...so I am very conscious of what it is I do with the poo and where it is the poo actually lands.
Another thing that I was taught from a young age, leave it cleaner than you found it. I have always tried to follow that and teach that me to my son. We try our best to do Something to make it better than it was the way we found it. It only takes a few seconds to pick up a couple of things and put them in a more appropriate spot (trash can).
All in all, I think Everyone can agree on this, stepping, sitting, laying in poo (of any kind) is not fun. Respect others, protect others, take care of your or yours poo!!! It takes time for it to go back to the earth, so be respectful and just pick it up unless it is way off the beaten track.