These passive-aggressive, anti-dog signs are ruining my life

Various signs intended to deter dogs from doing their business dot my neighborhood. Various signs intended to deter dogs from doing their business dot my neighborhood. Photo: Filipa Ioannou/SFGATE Photo: Filipa Ioannou/SFGATE Image 1 of / 43 Caption Close These passive-aggressive, anti-dog signs are ruining my life 1 / 43 Back to Gallery

Several months ago I moved to an almost offensively idyllic block in Rockridge. Having strolled College Avenue many times in the months before my move, I was aware that this neighborhood was packed to the gills with high-quality dogs.

But it was only when I began walking my own dog on the surrounding side streets that I started noticing the many, many signs imploring my dog not to pee and poop. A large share of these signs were not on front lawns – an area I think of as a clear, cut and dried extension of someone’s house and therefore domain – but instead in the more liminal area between the sidewalk and the street, or sometimes in the sidewalk islands that house trees.

EAST BAY DEBATE: When is it ok to steal your neighbor's produce?

The signs say things like "BE RESPECTFUL." Others make jokes that are mildly upsetting, like "Warning: Electrified grass activated by dog poop."

It would almost be easier to deal with the signs if their subtext was made text, if they came right out and said, “You are a bad person if you let your dog do his or her business on the tree-island in front of my house, which I have been empowered to maintain by the City of Oakland, although it is still technically public property.”

But no, the signs do not state. They merely imply. They are like a lady from the South saying “Bless your heart” when she clearly means “I hope you choke on your own bile.”

The platonic ideal of the “Don’t pee here” sign was spotted by my boss in the North Bay. It does not verbally reference peeing, pooping, or even dogs. Instead, it says only: “Non, merci,” with a silhouette of a dog.

“Non, merci”!!!

“French is the language of diplomacy, after all,” the anti-pee sign-owner probably thought smugly before hammering that sign into the dirt.

Many of the signs will not deign to mention poop and pee themselves, instead just gesturing at them vaguely, like relics from the Victorian Era. To this, I would like to offer a piece of advice: If you’re not direct enough to talk about poop and pee, you’re not going to tell me where my dog can poop and pee (when it is also public property).

ALSO: These are the new etiquette rules San Francisco needs

I am not unsympathetic to the plight of the homeowner here. My friend Steve meticulously tends to the plant situation around his house, scrupulously maintaining his verdant lawn at great personal cost, only to have the same neighbor bring her dog to poop on it every day, like clockwork. To have one's labor pooped all over is certainly not an ideal situation.

"One time I was in my garage getting ready to leave for work, and the girl with the dog walked by my house to wait at the end of the street, and was just waiting there with the dog," he recalled. "Then as I was driving away I saw, in the rear view mirror, her walk back to my lawn and let her dog poop."

While, again, I do not let my dog poop or pee on lawns, I can see how this sort of situation could embitter a person towards dogs and the people who let them out to do their business willy-nilly all over a neighborhood.

But there's also an air of hostility and paranoia, an air of Panopticon-lite, cultivated by placing finger-wagging signs on what is functionally property reserved for public use — the sidewalk. There is a gulf in how reasonable it is to insist that people clean up after their pets in such areas (very reasonable) and to insist that their pets should not go to the bathroom at all (less reasonable!).

Alas, it seems there is a long-simmering cold war between the dog owners and the people with delicate bushes and flowers in the sidewalk zone, if a number of heated threads on NextDoor are any indication. In my neighborhood, a recently shared comic shows a person who did not pick up after their dog being ushered into the depths of hell.

"Exactly where they belong! Ha!! Ha!!" one person replied. "Exactly!" chimed in another.

Indeed, a cursory look at Twitter suggests the trend exists across cities, with one woman from Denver describing a controversial Nextdoor post in which a person shared a photo of their dog pooping next to a piece of anti-poop signage, spawning a thread in which people unsurprisingly "lost their s—."

Look, I will always steer my dog away from your lawn, and its impressive range of flowering bushes and tasteful drought-resistant succulents.

But I cannot help it if, at some point on the three quarters of a mile between me and the dog park — the closest one available near my apartment, which does not have a yard — she has to pee somewhere on the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street. This does not warrant being shamed by a tiny, yet potently judgment-loaded, placard. That strip is a bathroom for animals. It is the least objectionable place for them to possibly pee. I guarantee various raccoons and squirrels are already peeing there, and some of them literally have the plague!

Think of it from the dog's perspective — imagine having a full bladder and being forced to walk past a half-mile of perfectly acceptable toilets arrayed in a line, taunting you. Imagine making your way past all those suitable bathroom spots before you reach another, virtually identical place where peeing is allowed. Could you do it every day? I could not!

Isn't the point of choosing to live in a city, acknowledging that we don't have complete control over our surroundings, that that lack of control is one source of the dynamism and vitality of the urban landscape? Isn't it the essence of being a good neighbor to acknowledge that we are all doing the best that we can, that the messiness of life (sometimes literally) is an inevitability that we can all face more gracefully with kindness?