How Did Philly Dog Culture Get So Out of Control?

Has Philly dog culture gotten out of control? / Illustration by Lars Leetaru

Moving is hard enough without dog shit on the bottom of your shoe. I would know: Since I first arrived in Philadelphia in 2017, I’ve moved five times. On an afternoon in late summer last year, while in the laborious process of my most recent relocation, I was headed to the local police station to pick up a NO PARKING sign that everyone was undoubtedly going to ignore anyway. As usual, I was running late and had to hurry before the counter closed. So I picked up the pace, made a split-second decision to jaywalk across the street, took one step off the curb, and immediately placed my right Birkenstock into something soft, sort of wet, and pungent. Surely it’s not, I thought. It couldn’t be. Not now. In six carless years here, I’ve never once stepped in dog shit. But on that afternoon, I surely had. And though I was overcome by incredible rage and the urge to stand there screaming at the top of my lungs, I was also still late. I scraped the crap off my shoe and onto the curb as best I could and continued on.

Maybe it was residual bitterness, or maybe I was just paying closer attention, but in the following weeks, I started seeing reasons to be irritated by dogs and their owners everywhere I looked: big clusters of green poop bags on street corners and in empty trash cans after the garbage men had already come by, overexcited dogs digging up flower beds or straining against their leashes to snap at each other, sometimes dogs not on leashes at all. And what vexes me most, dogs in settings where they have no conceivable business being: pharmacies, banks, malls, offices, restaurants, and, perhaps worst of all, grocery stores.

Certain situations are forgivable, in my mind. Popping into the coffee shop on Bandit’s morning walk and exiting once your coffee’s in hand? Fine. But why, more and more often, was I finding myself inching around a Labrador to get to the cauliflower at Whole Foods? As much as I love dogs — I grew up with two of my own — their constant unexpected presence and the irresponsibility of their handlers bewildered me.

While my threshold for canine irritation is admittedly pretty low, the people around me were grappling with pet peeves as well. What started out one day as a conversation among colleagues about an out-of-town friend’s pet I was sitting turned into a staff-wide tirade about careless dog ownership in the city. One co-worker raged about how fellow tenants in her building repeatedly allow their pooches to accost her in the elevator. (“‘He’s friendly!’ they always seem to say.”) Our editor, Brian Howard, said the tendencies of his neighborhood’s dog walkers put him in “a borderline froth,” and bemoaned how often he finds the fabric cover of his cargo bike soaked in urine. Our magazine’s art director, Ticia Albano, recounted a horrifying encounter at her local dog park that resulted in a person being bitten, an EMT being called, and her pit bull, Lula, becoming too traumatized to return to the park she’d once loved, among her other grievances with the city’s dog owners.

“There are the people with those long extendable leashes who just let their dogs wander, the people who aren’t watching or modifying their dog’s behavior, people who don’t clean up after their dog, people who aren’t respecting their neighbors by letting their dogs pee everywhere,” she says. “It’s frustrating for a dog owner who tries to do good by their dog and by their neighbors.”

Philly is undeniably a dog town. It has the eighth highest dog population of the country’s largest metro areas, with approximately 788,000 households — about 32 percent — cohabiting with at least one pup. And in both the city and the country, more and more people have become pet parents: Within a year of the first few COVID cases in the U.S., more than 23 million American households had acquired a new dog (or cat). Locally, both the Animal Care and Control Team of Philadelphia (ACCT) and the Philadelphia Animal Welfare Society­ (PAWS) experienced spikes in adoptions during the pandemic, with adoption managers struggling to keep up with demand.

In many ways, I sympathize with urban dog owners. My own family dogs, Finn and Brooklyn, experienced all the advantages of a cushy upbringing in the suburbs: a sizable front yard in which to do zoomies, plentiful walking trails and dedicated parks not far from our house, and the kind of quiet afforded by a 20-mile distance from the nearest major city. Our older dog, Finn, who has never left the state of Maryland, has probably never in his life seen a bus that wasn’t a school bus.

The droves of dogs living in my neighborhood of Queen Village? Not so lucky. I asked a few of the walkers I see on a regular basis about the challenges of being a dog owner in Philly. For many, in true Philly fashion, their biggest issue was linked to trash. Queen Village resident Heather Atkinson recalled how almost all the red wire trash cans that once dotted the neighborhood were removed by the South Street Headhouse District earlier this year due to the piles of household garbage being stuffed into them and the high cost of having them emptied daily. Now, she says, “Whenever there’s a trash can, it fills up immediately, and then people start putting their trash all around the can, and within 48 hours, there’s just a giant pile of trash and poop and flies.”

As Leigh Siegfried, founder of dog training center Opportunity Barks, tells it, some of her clients’ most frequent complaints concern litter, especially chicken bones and other discarded food items, and the task of constantly monitoring to make sure their dogs don’t sneakily eat them. “Urban dog owners, you have your work cut out for you,” says Siegfried. “We feel for you; we get it.” Add in issues like the scarcity of off-leash dog parks — there are only seven­ authorized by the city — and strangers reaching out for unsolicited belly rubs, and urban life isn’t particularly easy for owners or their dogs.

In an ideal world, laws would effectively impose order and help us coexist, and people would follow them. In our world, the desires of dog owners and the desires of the dogless seem to be constantly at odds, and the laws aren’t doing much to help. But it’s not necessarily the fault of the regulators. It’s also our resistance to being regulated.

When it comes to the issue of dogs tagging along on coffee runs or trips to Acme, Pennsylvania and New Jersey health department codes are fairly clear: Non-service animals are forbidden in grocery stores, convenience stores, restaurants, bars, and pretty much any establishment that handles food and drink. (These regulations notably don’t make any allowances for “emotional support animals,” which are a whole can of worms on their own.) But this can lead to tricky situations. It’s illegal for business owners to request documentation or a demonstration to prove that an animal is a service animal, and many proprietors choose to look the other way or even court the patronage of dog owners. Ever notice those water bowls outside coffee shops or jars of dog treats under the counter? As for dogs at restaurants specifically, the FDA decided just last year that pups can now enjoy outdoor dining with their owners if local laws and the restaurants in question allow it. Pennsylvania law does, as does Philadelphia, under the city’s leash law, so long as the animal is restrained.

That leaves business owners in charge of deciding what to allow. And that can be an exhausting battle to wage.

“We used to crack down on the dogs, but customers were raising so much of a stink about it, especially considering we’re right next to a dog park,” says a South Street Whole Foods employee who requested to remain anonymous. “I think leadership just got tired of arguing.”

She explains that in recent years, employees expressed safety and cleanliness concerns in an attempt to get upper management to take action on the dog issue at their location. In fact, it wasn’t entirely rare that a dog would cause a ruckus or even relieve itself inside the store. But no significant changes were made. “I just learned to stop complaining,” she says.

When I end my neighborhood walk with her in front of the store, I notice something at the entrance for the first time — a green sign, about the size of a sheet of printer paper. It reads “PLEASE. NO PETS.” I ask how long it’s been there. “Since the beginning,” the employee says, frowning. “I bet there’s a dog in there right now.”

The big idea hovering over many conversations about modern pet ownership, particularly in cities, is about our pets’ wants and needs and the lengths to which owners are beholden to them. Millions of us suddenly acquired animal companionship during the early days of the pandemic, in search of a little joy and an excuse to go outside. But now, four years later, we still haven’t come to terms with the complex responsibility pets bring.

“Dog culture,” as Siegfried calls it, has changed in many ways in recent years. The four-legged population has become more a part of the fabric of our lives than it has ever been. But while pets are increasingly being brought into environments alongside humans and other animals, they’re not always properly prepared to be there. “The expectations to manage a dog, to train a dog, to teach a dog in an urban environment are tough on dog owners,” Siegfried says. “I don’t know that they know that, though.”

Essentially, for city denizens raising city dogs, sit, stay, and paw aren’t going to cut it. Think more in the realm of skills like impulse control, release on command, and anxiety management.

And while we’re on the subject of anxiety management, it may also be time for a reassessment of the whole “separation anxiety” thing. As Carlo Siracusa, a veterinary behaviorist and associate professor of clinical behavior medicine at Penn’s vet school, explains, this notion that a large number of dogs simply cannot be left alone at home after becoming accustomed to having their owners constantly by their sides throughout the pandemic assumes a lot about a dog’s preferences — and about pets’ capacity for sociability as a whole.

Dogs, much like people, have individual personalities and can react in myriad ways to attention and changes in routine. Some did struggle with their owners’ return to the outside world, but many others were actually struggling with being deprived of their alone time in the first place. They may also react in a variety of ways to being carted around on an owner’s trip to Wawa for Hoagiefest. “I don’t think we can make a general statement for all dogs,” Siracusa says. “What I can definitely say is that people tend to overestimate how much dogs enjoy or need social interaction. The fact that many people think bringing the dog outside with you invariably is better than leaving the dog at home — that’s not true.”

What he tends to discuss with his clients, he says, is, “What’s the best choice for your dog? What is your dog asking? Get an education on what dog communication and body language looks like. Try to understand what the dog is trying to tell you. As humans, we have freedom to choose. Many dogs don’t have this freedom.”

This brings up a pertinent but touchy subject: the responsibility of humans as, legally speaking when it comes to our pets, the owners of property. The pandemic thrust a slew of underlying issues to the forefront of our minds, including our relationships with the animals we love and the pressures we put on them to conform to our lives. That millennials see their pets as replacements for children is a loaded stereotype, but we humans often do see our pets as extensions of ourselves. We consider them family. (That’s not an exaggeration. A 2023 Pew Research Center study showed that just over 50 percent of pet-owning Americans feel their pets are as much a part of the family as any human member.) We want them to be as sociable as we are — to want to come to the grocery store with us and to enjoy it, or at least tolerate it. But some pets don’t. And some people don’t tolerate it, either.

Siracusa says it best: “A dog is just an animal with limited ability, limited cognitive skills, living in a world in which — people­ are not always aware of this — but in which it’s a captive animal.”

So no, it’s not that I don’t like dogs. I don’t blame dogs for circumstances outside their control. I blame their people. Experts and professionals in the pet-handling­ field agree: The onus falls on us to make decisions that serve our dogs and communities best. This is the duty we take on when we welcome animals into our homes and promise to care for them to the best of our ability. And it’s clear that Philadelphians do care about their dogs, what with all the dog-centric bars and bakeries and yappy hours and puppy yoga and Doggie Style locations in almost every neighborhood. But misconceptions about our pets’ wants and needs, as well-intended as they may be, can create non-ideal circumstances for both dogs and the humans who live among them.

None of which, of course, allows for any doubt when it comes to our duty toward their doings. One afternoon in late summer as I sat outside at a cafe, working on this very article, I watched as a man exited the shop with his dog in tow — a massive sheepdog of some kind. They crossed the street and stopped for a moment while the pooch answered nature’s call. Once it had finished, the owner took one brief look at the droppings, then continued on his merry­ way.

In what kind of civilized society is it acceptable to let a pet piddle on a neighbor’s stoop or decorate the sidewalk with a steaming pile of poo? Granted, the dearth of public bins in high-traffic areas, especially areas that can’t afford the maintenance, isn’t making things easy. But is it such a lofty ask to bag that shit and take it a few more blocks to be disposed of properly? My co-worker Ticia blames a rising culture of selfishness since the pandemic. Siracusa has observed that dog walkers are often distracted by their phones or the errands they’re simultaneously running and explains that their dogs, thrown off by a lack of consistent routine, just take care of business wherever they can.

Then again, humankind has spent millennia pondering why people lie, cheat, and steal. We may be similarly doomed to keep spinning our wheels hoping to understand what could ever possess someone to not pick up after their dog.

When I asked Siegfried for her take on the caca conundrum, hers was an answer that feels as close to resolution as we’ll ever get: “Sometimes, Philly is just gonna Philly.”

Published as “Who Let the Dogs Out?” in the November 2024 issue of Philadelphia magazine.