Ordinance A Duty That Needs Doing

You’re in Manito Park, enjoying the roses and the sunshine when it happens. Or you’re hiking around Tubbs Hill in Coeur d’Alene, transfixed by Lake Coeur d’Alene and its gorgeous shoreline - and not watching your step. In a split second, your smile turns to a scowl. You’ve stepped in dog manure.

Indeed, dog manure happens.

But it wouldn’t happen as much as it does in public places if dog owners thought as highly of their neighbors as they do of their dogs. A quick check of Spokane parks shows that some dog owners think little of their neighbors. Dog manure is everywhere, waiting to ruin someone’s day.

After discussion Monday and a slight modification, the Spokane City Council is poised to adopt an ordinance proposed by Councilman Steve Eugster, requiring owners to clean up after their dogs in city parks. The council should do just that. Spokane isn’t New York City. But it’s still too big and too populated to permit this daily nuisance and health hazard to continue.

“We have found it to be a problem with hundreds and hundreds of dogs that parade through our parks each day,” said Eugster, who lives across from Cannon Hill Park. “Most civilized cities have these ordinances.”

If anything, Eugster’s ordinance doesn’t go far enough.

Pooper-scooper laws in neighboring Coeur d’Alene and Post Falls apply to public property and others’ yards citywide. Additionally, dogs aren’t permitted in most city parks in the two towns, leashed or unleashed. The difference the law makes can be seen in comparing Coeur d’Alene’s City Park, where dogs aren’t allowed, to Tubbs Hill, where they are. City Park is clean, while the lower path around Tubbs Hill is strewn with dog manure.

Few have been fined or prosecuted under Post Falls’ ordinance, which is the oldest one of its kind on the books locally. And no one has been charged under Coeur d’Alene’s pooper-scooper law. But that doesn’t mean the ordinances are unenforceable. Or ineffective. If nothing else, according to Post Falls animal control officer Christine Weeks, the city laws send a powerful message to responsible pet owners. Most owners, she said, now arm themselves with baggies or other devices to clean up after their pets.

Post Falls council members chuckled seven years ago when an irritated resident first approached them with a dog complaint. A neighbor routinely allowed his dog to defecate in the man’s yard during daily walks. This, while it was on a leash. After the laughter died down, the council passed the ordinance, which restored peace and good manners to that neighborhood immediately.

You can teach an old dog owner new tricks - particularly if there’s a $25 fine involved.