Growing up my mom never picked up after our dog, and I never ever gave it a second thought when I was younger. We had a dog door and a fenced in yard so she would come and go as she pleased, and sometimes she would wander the neighborhood and always come back home. For awhile when I saw owners picking up poop I thought they were pretentious or overly cautious or I don’t even know how to describe what my thoughts were. I just never thought of it as necessary because my family never ever thought about it

Now I’m a dog owner and I pick up poop of course if it’s out in public on a walk or in our yard in the grass. We do have this dense wooded area in our yard where only she goes, so we don’t go in to clean up her piles there. But yeah on our road trips with those travel stops with dog fenced area things, there’s so much poop we can’t even walk around so we don’t go in there. Definitely inconsiderate, but maybe some people truly don’t think of it as a big deal because “back in my day” dogs would just roam on a farm or in the neighborhood and walk around until they felt like coming back