She Drops Strong Hints About Dogs Leaving Droppings

Lawless dog owners in this seaside neighborhood know just what to do when they see white-haired Margaret Butt.

Run.

Oh, you can run all right, but you can’t hide from Butt, a self-appointed pooper scooper vigilante. She will give chase in white cotton socks and open-toed sandals, bellowing in her full-throated Welsh lilt: “Where’s yoooour baaaag?”

Everyone seems to know her. She is a hero to some, a meddler to others. Butt has followed people home who don’t clean up after their dogs and reported their addresses to police since a city ordinance took effect in 1995, requiring pet owners to carry cleanup materials when they walk their animals.

Once, she bundled up the mess left by a neighbor’s Dalmatian and deposited it on his front doorstep. And a couple of years ago, when Butt addressed the City Council, then-Mayor John Hedges waved his empty dog waste bag like a white flag to prove that he and his Rottweiler were not among the scofflaws.

“Some run away from me, dear. Isn’t that cute?” said Butt, 66, a stout woman who twists her hair into a tight bun. “A lot of them [who run] say to me, ‘Margaret, you know me! I carry a bag!’ But I like to see it.’ ”

Here, in a city of multimillion-dollar homes and picture-postcard views, residents are serious about dog mess. Next year’s proposed budget calls for $38,000 to install more than 40 “dog walk bag” dispensers throughout the city. In 1995, the city spent $15,000 to tack pet owner warnings onto 7,000 city signs, reminding them to clean up or face a maximum fine of $500.

Butt says the dog droppings issue cuts to the heart of democracy: People must respect the law and their neighbors, she insists, on even the most basic levels.

She says she can’t do anything about murders or other serious crimes, so she turns her attention to dog walkers who skirt the law.

“You see, dear, we shouldn’t even have an ordinance,” she said sadly. “It should be a courtesy that everyone picks it up. . . . It’s a deeper issue to me, of personal responsibility.

“[Imagine] you’re walking along the ocean, and there you see a dirty, huge mess, and you look and think, ‘Now what kind of a person is that?’ ”

So far, Butt has turned in the addresses of about a dozen alleged violators to police and plans to report five more.

But Newport Beach Police Sgt. John Desmond said that to issue a citation, officers must see an owner walk away from the dog’s droppings.

Otherwise, animal control officer Mike Teague has told her, there is little the city can do.

“I wouldn’t necessarily stop someone if we didn’t see a bag sticking out of their pocket,” he said. “That would be kind of harassing.”

Meanwhile, Butt persists in chasing lawbreaking dog walkers, some of whom try to rattle her with unkind words.

“Oh, you’re the s--- lady of Corona del Mar,” one man told her.

She shot back dryly: “I’m glad you’re calling me a lady.”

Another dog walker followed Butt to her job as a caregiver to the elderly and complained to her boss.

Bag-carrying dog owner Joe Sanchez has seen Butt but has never spoken with her.

“I don’t question her intentions,” said Sanchez, 62. “I’m just not sure about the in-your-face approach.”

Butt practices what she preaches. She has owned dogs but doesn’t now. Still, on her daily walks, she carries plastic bags in case she runs across a “mess,” the way she did on a recent afternoon, smack in the middle of a bed of purple flowers.

Her face fell.

“It’s very sad,” she said softly. “Doesn’t it look bad to you?”

Not to mention the safety issue.

“Well, my dear,” she said, her voice full of regret, “in Laguna Beach, a woman fell right into it . . . and broke her hip. It was from a big dog.”

Butt, who is single with no children, has been a renter in Newport Beach for nearly 50 years. She talks to anyone she sees and swaps stories with angry neighbors who find a fresh pile of dog droppings in their rosebushes.

One woman collected droppings from her neighbor’s dog and tossed the waste onto the back seat of his Porsche convertible.

“Well, it was a lesson, you know,” Butt said thoughtfully. “Yeah, it’s a lesson.”