In recent weeks, we’ve been house sitting with dogs in slightly rural (no sidewalks or street lights) parts of Woodside and Santa Barbara.  When we walk the dogs, we go out with a pocket full of plastic poop bags — black, blue, or green.  During the walk, we’re vigilant and diligent about noting when the dogs poop and picking up every bit of it in the plastic bags for proper disposal once we get back to the house.  At times, we’ve even picked up the poop of other dogs whose walkers chose to leave it where it dropped.  Picking up your dog’s poop is probably the law in most places, but also the common-sense, good-manners thing to do regardless of the law.

Okay.  But both Woodside and Santa Barbara harbor horses as well, and their owners or walkers ride them along some of the same trails and paths we’ve used for walking the dogs in our charge.  Without exception, horse owners/walkers do not pick up the horse poop they leave behind.  We expect dog owners to pick up their poop, but horse owners have no such reciprocal obligation.

Why is that?  Is it that horses are vegans and let loose vegan, and therefore less odious, poop, while dogs will eat pretty much anything and there’s no telling what’s in their poop?

Or are horses just more effective at lobbying lawmakers for an exemption from poop laws than are dogs?