Well it made me laugh.... (probably not you)

 Every pet has its foibles. My dog is extremely well behaved, but my goodness it's a poo machine. So much so that husband has complained he can't use garden any more because of the poo.

Basically it's my responsibility to do the poo (part of my 'let's get a dog' negotiation). But the garden the dog likes to poo in is up about 20 very steep steps and you can't see the garden from the lower part of the house. As a result I do clean up the poo, but sort of on a monthly basis.

So we recently put in a poo gate. A gate at the bottom of all the steps up to the back garden - so husband can use back garden without fear of poo.

This isn't cruel because dog is usually very happy to have its poo on the back patio. Somewhere nice and close to the house without a steep hill to climb and I'm very good at cleaning this up.

This morning dog showed signs of needing poo so I let it out. It tried to get under the poo gate, but couldn't. It then spent the next 20 minutes trying to find an alternative spot (why the usual spots were not OK I'll never know). She went into the shed, walked under the tables and then finally picked a flower bed.

The only issue with this is that we don't have proper flowers in the flower bed. It doesn't see much sun as it's at the bottom of the hill and north facing. As a result I've filled it with plastic foliage. Now some ivy has made it's way through the foliage it doesn't look too terrible (tell that to my mother who works for Royal Horticultural Society - she hates it - when she first saw it she said 'I don't even know what sort of plant it's pretending to be').

The only issue is - no matter how hard I look I cannot see the poo. Can you? It feels wrong allowing dog poo to fester on plastic plants - quite apart from the fact that with the french doors open we'll soon be able to smell the poo, even if we can't see it.

Anyway - it made me laugh - but I'm guessing you may not be laughing too!

OOOOOHHHH UPDATE - I published the blog and low and behold - there in the middle of the picture once published was the offending poo. Off to sort it now - promise!