Imagine owing a dog and living in a dog-friendly neighborhood where dogs are most certainly allowed. What would you do if you were told that while you could walk your dogs on HOA property, your dogs were not allowed to relieve themselves anywhere on HOA property? How would you prevent your dogs from doing their business until you got somewhere else?

It’s not like you can sit a dog down and have a conversation with them about how important it is to follow the HOA rules so you don’t get fined. These are dogs were talking about!

In this story, one dog owner is pretty frustrated with this ridiculous policy and for good reason, actually for multiple good reasons.

Keep reading for all the details.

AITA for ignoring my HOA when they say I have to take my dog off premises to do its business?

The HOA at the place we rent recently sent out an email (sent along by our landlord) stating that our dogs are not allowed to relieve themselves on the premises and should be taken off the HOA property to do their business.

To clarify, they know we’re picking up and disposing of the dog waste properly; they just don’t want it touching the lawn even for a second.

I have multiple objections to this:

These objections sound logical.

I’m unsure how I would accomplish this short of either hoisting my dogs up and carrying them until we’re 40+ feet away from my doorstep (Unless I learn to speak dog and explain to my dogs that they need to hold it until we’re past the property line)

The only properties surrounding ours are those of other condos. So in order to walk our dogs and avoid having to drive them to a park every time they need to do their business, they are telling us “We don’t want your dog to go on our lawn, we want your dog to go on our neighbor’s lawn because their grass is less important than ours.”

I recognize that I’m being a bit of a jerk here, but I honestly think that anyone who’s biggest grievance in life is that other people’s dogs are using the restroom in their general vicinity needs more adversity in their life. Or at the very least needs to find a hobby.

AITA? Thanks in advance!

The policy does seem pretty ridiculous.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about neighbors who can’t get along because of a totally legal gate.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted.

This person wishes OP luck, and honestly, I think they’ll need it.

This is a good question.

Another person has good questions about this policy.

Here’s something to consider.

This does sound like a very frustrating policy. The first step is probably to check the bylaws and see if this actually is an official policy. If it’s not, can they even enforce it?

If it is an official policy, maybe talking to some other dog owners in the neighborhood would help. If they attended an HOA board meeting together maybe they could try to get the policy changed. But only maybe.

HOAs can be vicious places where the people in charge want nothing more than to enforce the rules no matter how ridiculous or picky the rules may be.

It doesn’t sound like this HOA is very dog friendly.