About Umbrage Court
Umbrage Court adjudicates the extremely minor problems of urban living and strives to bring clarity to the Urban Compact. If you have business before the court, please email [email protected].
Hello! It’s been four years and five months since the last time an Umbrage Court column appeared. Anything happen since then around DC? No? Okay, great, let’s get to a pair of dog-pee-related questions that unexpectedly appeared Friday morning.
Dog owners in my NoMa building let their pups pee right outside the entrance. This is merely gross in the cooler months, but it’s especially disgusting in the summer, when the smell of dog urine greets anyone who walks in or out of the building. Are they allowed to let their dogs pee there?
Urban etiquette situations tend to arise when a behavior is not specifically addressed by law—when the matter at hand is a question of someone behaving thoughtlessly. But where a dog relieves itself is actually covered by Title 22 of the District of Columbia’s municipal regulations:
900.7 No person owning, keeping, or having custody of a dog, except a seeing eye dog, shall allow or permit the dog to defecate or urinate on public parking or any sidewalk or in any and each such person shall immediately remove dog excrement from any curb, gutter, alley or street.
Now, the question of which municipal body might enforce such a regulation, much less care about it enough to enforce it, is beyond the ambit of this court. The DC police haven’t returned Washingtonian‘s email asking about it, and frankly, this court will be impressed if they do.
But if we accept that the law reflects, however imperfectly, our priorities as a society, the democratic intent here is clear: No one wants to walk on fragrant sidewalks, especially in the summertime.
Dog owners (like this court) know that dogs are notorious for not caring about the laws of humans. Their reading skills are atrocious, and if they see a squirrel, they’re totally going to stop paying attention to your lecture. Therefore, it’s up to dog owners to help Fido stay on the straight and narrow by training him to hold it until he can make use of a tree box, median strip, or any grass-covered public right of way. When good intentions fail—and they do—it’s a dog owner’s responsibility to at least make a show of washing away their charge’s effluvium by pouring water on it. (You do carry water for your best friend when it’s this hot, right?)
If you object to this ruling, you have two choices: 1) Lobby your elected representatives to change the law; 2) Be a jerk. The court trusts you’ll make the right call.
Are people allowed to put signs on medians saying dogs can’t pee there?
Medians, pedestrian islands, and public parks are all A-OK places for dogs to pee. Where things get tricky is private property that abuts public right-of-ways. DC is allowed to seek easements in such spaces at times. If something like a tree or a structure in your front yard makes it difficult for drivers or pedestrians to navigate, for instance, the government can try to get a “Sight Distance Easement” to remedy the situation, though they’re far more likely to try to work with a homeowner first.
An Arlington resident took the problem of dogs peeing in front of his house to a surprising length a few years ago when he installed “scat mats” to prevent neighborhood dogs from relieving themselves on his expensive shrubs. Nextdoor exploded in resentment, and then like all good internet-related controversies, it’s not clear whether anything actually came of all the shouting.
It’s a violation of the Urban Compact—the unspoken rules that allow us all to live together—to let your dog pee in someone’s front yard, even though in some parts of the District, front yards are considered “public parking” areas, which means that even if they host landscaping and homeowners maintain it, they’re not private property. It’s simply polite for you and your dog to respect folks’ front yards. This court offers similar guidance for portions of median strips that people have landscaped, installed gardens, etc.—we should encourage attempts at beautification rather than take a whiz on them. Let your dog pee on the grass on median strips all you want. They gotta go somewhere! But Umbrage Court’s advice is for you, not your dog: Don’t be a jerk.
Send your umbrage-related questions to abeaujon@washingtonian.com.
Andrew Beaujon joined Washingtonian in late 2014. He was previously with the Poynter Institute, TBD.com, and Washington City Paper. He lives in Del Ray.
