I have a neighbor whose dog often comes into my yard to poop. I've
spoken to this neighbor several times about it and he's always
apologetic but with mixed results. Another neighbor who observed this
suggested I smear dog poop under the door handles of his car, or fling
it at his house.

Instead, when his dog poops in my yard I call him up and ask him to come
over and clean it up, which he cheerfully does.

Do I like his dog coming over here? No, but this solution is acceptable.
I'm happy, the neighbor is happy, and his dog is happy (I presume). I'm
not sitting here with smoke coming out of my ears dreaming up revenge so
I can feel smug about seeing some jerk get what's coming to them.

-- Charlie

What you did is called communication and reasoning. Thankfully this tact
usaully works and I'm glad it worked out to your satisfaction. I also
think in all cases this should be tried, even before "calling the cops".

Still, I have come accross people who can't be reasoned with. Period.
Taking the case of your neighbor, suppose the neighbor's response was:

"My dog wasn't over there, must have been someone elses..."

So you take picture of the dog crapping in your yard and show it to him.

"I really can't tell if that's my dog..."

So then you pound on their door the moment the dog crouches in your yard.
You finally have indisputable evidence the dog is crapping in your yard,
forcing the owner to own up to his responsibility, so he over and cleans
up the mess.

Are you always going to catch the dog crapping? Are you always going to
be able get the owner while the dog is crapping? Do you think based on
the owners previous responses that they will clean up the **** on their
own without your "indisputtable proof"?

In short, this person's lack of responsibility has put the burden on
someone else. Either be more vigilant alerting the owner, clean the ****
up yourself, or deal with the consequences of dog **** in your yard.
Since you can't be vigilant enough to always see where the dog went, you,
your family, or your guest may have to deal with stepping in dog **** and
bringing it into your house.

Please believe me, I'm not abdicating ANY course of action. I merely wish
to state that Doug is right in the sense that there are inconsiderate
people who can't be reaasoned with, and often if it not a criminal offense
the police (especially in larger cities) will not respond in a timely
manner. When they do the inconsiderate SOB merely denies their fault.
This ofen leads to finding a way to tolerate it or finding a way to make
them stop.

I know I'm being picky (unfortunately that's who I am), but to me it's not
always the action that I find offensive. Often it's the fact that someone
who doesn't really know me is making an assumption that I should deal with
a mess that they've chosen not to. Without getting into semantics like
physical ability or age, an owner allowing their dog crap in my yard
without cleaning it up, indicates that the owners time is "too important"
to tend to his responsibility. It say that even on my property, their
needs come first. When I see someone flick ashes out of the window of
their new car, then throws the butt out it screams: "I find a messy car
offensive, here you deal with it okay?" When someone parks their new car
in a crowded lot two spaces is says: "My car is too important to get
scratched so one other person will get to walk two blocks in the rain to
go shopping". If your neighbor blast their stereo at 3am they're
saying: "I don't care about your comfort:

Inconsiderate behavior in general screams a chorus of: "ME! ME! ME! **** YOU!"

And your right, Charlie, I won't waste my time hoping for something "bad"
to happen to these people, but I can't profess to being above smiling at
irony or in worse cases having a lack of compassion when the irony is
cruel. In the case of people inconsiderate with their car, sadly, it
would make me chuckle if someone accidently bumped their car at the light,
scratching their bumper causing them to spill their beverage over their
new interior of the car that they burdened others with to keep pristine.
If the inconsiderate neighbors dog get away and is hit by a car, I will
feel terrible for the dog, and the neighbors kids, but I doubt if any of
my sympathy falls with the neighbor.

From what you write, your a very reasonable person and probably a better
person than I am. You seem like you would be a very nice neighbor to
have. People like yourself server as a good example that I have to
continue to try to be a better person.

I sincerely hope your neighbor realizes how lucky he is and learns to
clean up after his pet without your calls.

Take Care!

Bob