We recently moved into a house in a suburb that feels like a small town. We like the house, but I’m still not sure about leaving the city. My children love our front yard, and we play out there nearly every day. My children are young, 4 and 1 years old, and the back yard is a hill that is difficult to negotiate for my littlest. So if we are playing outside, it has to be in the front yard. The problem is I (or my children) find dog crap in my yard all the time. We don’t have pets, but as far as I can tell, almost everyone else on our street does. I’ve seen at least four different dogs in my yard at various times as well as a few cats. I’m not monitoring my yard constantly or interested in starting that but I don’t want other people’s pets using my yard as a toilet. It’s not just a pain to clean up, but it is unsanitary, and my kids are still at the stage where they have to touch everything. Each time I’m scooping up poop or washing it off a child’s shoe, I fantasize about visiting my neighbors one by one and yelling at them to come pick up after their dogs. I don’t really want to do that because I’d like to have a friendly relationship with my neighbors. But what do I do? Is it normal to just let your dog roam around and leave waste wherever it wants, or did I pick the wrong street to buy a house on?
