Weird encounter and dog walking and peeing

Had a weird encounter the other day with a guy and questioning etiquette with the dog on the street. Few days ago I’m out for the evening walk with the dog. He’s doing his thing and sniffing and getting the news like beagles usually do. We come up to what I call a tree box in the city.

Tree boxes are little enclosures around a tree that is between the street and sidewalk. Typically there’s a tree then a little bit of grass/ mulch/dirt with maybe plantings. Sometimes there’s a little calf-high barrier around them. There’s basically three types, well kept ones with flowers or manicured bushes and grass or mulch. Decent ones with either just grass or mulch and maybe an unkept bush, and unmaintained ones that are just dirt/mulch. Some tree boxes even have little signs either asking dogs to either stay out of or to come enjoy a potty break.

My dog goes into the second type. It has no signage, some mulch in it, and a small bush that doesn’t look like any pruning has been done this year. It’s in front of a commercial building. He pees in the mulch and then does a scoot-scoot action where he kicks out his hind legs which throws a little mulch into the road. My dog only randomly does the scoot-scoot after peeing and maybe does it once every two or three walks.

Some random guy passing by yells at me and says that my beagle is a bad dog for doing that. He says I should train my dog not to do that. I tell him I can’t stop my dog from doing that (aside from jerking his leash). He then says people work hard on those tree boxes and yells that I’m a bad owner and my dog is an asshole. I tell him he’s an idiot and to fuck off. He then reiterates what a bad owner I am while walking beside me before I turn to go a different direction.

So my question is do people train their dogs not to scoot scoot? I’ve never heard of this. I’m respectful of signage in the tree boxes and keep my dog out of the well-manicured ones. But I don’t think it’s possible or natural to stop the scoot scooting.