My post earlier this month about the two scoop law signs I saw in Tacoma, WA jogged the memory of reader Joan, who had planned to share the one she found in Entraygues-sur-Truyère, “a beautiful town in the central mountains of France.” I’m glad she remembered, because it’s a hoot:

Now that’s a dog. Compare, if you will, the standard PNW dog we’ve now seen in both the Seattle and Tacoma signs — also a hound, but lacking the character and avoirdupois (and eyes) of his French counterpart. And what could be more charming than that Hershey’s Kiss of a pile of poop? You have to ask whether a dog as chubby as this one really needs a chain-link leash, but the main thing to notice is that the sign says nothing about picking the poop up.

By contrast, this sign (sent in by reader Shannon from a Kansas road trip) noisily urges you to pick up after your pet, but goes all coy about what, exactly, you’re picking up. There’s no poop in sight; the only object depicted, in fact, other than a dog, is a leash — and the dog has already picked it up.

The more I think about this sign, in fact, the more it irritates me. What is with the leash in the dog’s mouth?? You can see from the background that Shannon was at a rest area when she took the picture, and it’s a cardinal rule in pet travel safety that you slap a leash on your dog even before you exit your car in a strange place like a rest area. Not only does this sign fail in its intended purpose, it tends to encourage dog owners to engage in risky behavior.

My thanks to Joan and Shannon for the wonderful photos — keep them coming, my friends! If you want to see the others in the collection, click on the “scoop law” tag below this post, or type “scoop law” in the search box.