u/Front_Ad4415

I (45f) had a young (probably mid 20s) couple move in to the rental duplex across from the home I own in a small town (population 2500). They do not have a fenced yard but there is fencing on two sides of their corner lot. They have 2 medium sized dogs that she will let out of the house to go do their business, while she goes back inside. Obviously, they don't stay in their yard and will roam as far as a couple blocks to find somewhere to poop. I often hear her calling from her doorway the dogs' names for up to 10 minutes straight, because they can't be bothered to get an anchor and some leads to keep the dogs in their yard.

I didn't say anything the first...probably like 6 times I was forced to pick up her dogs poop in my front and back (which is fully fenced but usually the gate left open) yards. The next time it happened, though, I got pissed. My dog had died of kidney failure about a month before they moved in, and I was always good about picking up after him. The first couple times I picked up after her dogs I told myself I had just missed picking those up after my pup, even though the size difference made it unmistakable.

This day had already been a bad one for me, and I was really missing my dog, and when I saw her dogs poop in the middle of the front yard, I saw red. I had been told by multiple other neighbors that she had been talked to/warned not to let her dogs run loose multiple times, but she obviously didn't listen. When I picked up the poop, I bagged it, tied it shut, and waited until after the garbage truck did our street, and then I put the bag on top of their garbage bin.

The next time I had to pick up after her dogs, I bagged it, tied it, and left it on her doorstep. The NEXT time I had to pick it up, I wrote a note that threatened to call bylaw the next time I saw her dogs loose and to pick up her dogs shit before it got smeared on her front door, then I taped the note and a bag to her front door.

I watched her run over and pick up the poop in my front yard from my living room, making sure she saw me watching. It didn't stop them from letting the dogs loose every once in a while, but they did build an enclosed area for the dogs, and any time they were out in their yard with the dogs off leash and they heard me outside (as I made sure they would), they'd immediately take the dogs in.

If there had still been any young kids in our neighborhood, or I had ever seen the dogs act with aggression to anyone, I would have called bylaw, but since there weren't, and I didn't, I chose not to. When I told my parents the story, my mom said I had been an AH, but dad said I should've gone straight to bylaw or animal control. So AITA?