162. Clean it up!

                                                                   

Dog Shit or doogy doo as refined ladies call it is something that everyone has trod-in, the main ingredients of which appear to be Chicken McNuggets.

Now when you see elderly dog lovers walking their doggies along the road they invariable have with them a poop scoop for the picking up of the offending waste and in some posh towns that sometimes have a bin for the dumping of dumps which have just been freshly dumped by a dog who wished to dump.

And is dog fouling a problem?-yes it is. Once England was viewed as a nation of shop keepers by Napoleon, today it could be described as a nation of dog lovers and it is estimated that we have about six million dogs in England producing about 900 tonnes of poop a day and that sure is a lot of crap to be disposed of.

This crap is not harmless stuff and carries microbiological nasties such as toxocariasis, campylobacter, salmonella and a host of pathogenic organisms.

We teach our dogs not to crap where they shouldn't by rubbing their noses in it. Obviously they dislike this, but fortunately for us all they learn a valuable lesson. After what we saw on the Thames Path at Boveney weir the other day, we are thinking of applying the same rule to errant dog owners, with just a slight twist. The next time we see a dog crapping on a footpath, we are going to grab the owner and rub his nose in it.

Of course, it is illegal for dogs to foul public places and this is covered by the Fouling of Land Act and when offenders where asked why they didn’t clean up doggy doo, the answer came back, “We were too embarrassed to”. Yes embarrassed they would be seeing their name in the local newspaper which publically announced their names, addresses and fines which they have recently received for failure to observe a matter of common courtesy and common sense.