Dear dog poo abandoners of the world,
I just wanted to write a little note to kindly ask if you wouldn’t mind making just a teeny bit more effort to pick up your dog’s poo…
I thought I’d offer a little insight into just one example of the ongoing lifecycle of discarded poo in an attempt to raise awareness and change behaviour.
We’ve been enjoying half-term for the last week or so and yesterday, Nina, the kids and I decided to head out for a lovely family bike ride along a popular riverside path.
Autumn is such a wonderful time of year. The vibrant colour of the trees, the lazy sunlight glinting low in the sky, the cool crisp air and the blanket of crunchy leaves on the ground. A blanket that has adapted perfectly over millennia to provide the ideal camouflage for coils of steaming dog turd.
Of course, at any other time of year on a ride or walk, I’ll forgo taking in the delightful surroundings and instead focus my attention solely on the two metres in front in an attempt to identify potential poo threats in advance. I do this to avoid having to carry out extensive gip-accompanied clean-up operations and also so that I don’t have to be a pain and mention that there’s an issue.
In the Autumnal leaf bed, however, dog log identification is futile! At this time of year, I’m forced to throw caution to the wind, hope for the best, lift my gaze from the ground and truly appreciate the natural beauty of my extended surroundings.
Yesterday, ‘hope’ lasted 30 seconds and ended 50m from the car park, slap bang in the MIDDLE of the path. Oh Joy!.. I spotted it at the last second but alas it was too late. Luckily, I’m a grown-up child with a penchant for wheelies. On this occasion thankfully, my childishness significantly reduced poo contamination to just the rear end of my bike.
10 minutes later, in an attempt to remove the stubborn stool, I’d managed to befoul a further square kilometre of woodland. I dragged my bike through foliage, skidded it through gravel, rubbed it with leaves, picked it with sticks and even swished it around in the river.
My sincerest apologies to any subsequent path users caught up in the fall out. You, too, are the innocent victims.
We put the incident behind us and pedalled on, enjoying our ride and appreciating the sunshine, the colours and the air but now highly suspicious of the insidious blanket of leaves beneath our wheels.
T and I stopped for chat before crossing a bridge and as I listened to him chortle on, I noticed a large beige splodge on the side of his trainer. “Don’t move!!” I said, “It can’t be… Not again!” I took off his shoe, lifted it to my face and took a sniff. The pungent stench flooded my nostrils. I recoiled and wretched involuntarily as the unmistakable stink assaulted my nasal receptors. A lifetime of dog poo incidents flashed before my eyes. T looked at me worried: “Sorry Dad”. “Don’t be sorry son, it’s not your fault!”
I set about ‘cleaning up’ and polluting another square kilometre of woodland before accepting that this canine squeeze was so runny, it had soaked into the fabric of his shoe and was so thoroughly embedded in the nooks and crannies, it’d need a proper wash. I left T sitting shoeless on the floor while I went back down to the river to wash his entire trainer in the chilly water.
With the mood of the ride souring and a five year old with a now freezing cold, wet foot, we crossed the bridge and headed for home. The ride back was fun nonetheless and we did our best to try and put the poop incidents out of our minds. When we reached the van, the others had moved on and attempted to climb in unchecked and oblivious. “WAIT A MINUTE!” I quickly set up a temporary screening checkpoint where potentially contaminated items were identified, removed and set aside for processing.
As I write this, T’s trainers and jogging pants are rattling around the washing machine in the final phases of the decontamination process and just uploading this photo a moment ago almost made me gag.
As I hope you can see, those abandoned poos are more than just a little inconvenient for the people who follow in your wake.
Maybe next time your dog does a poo and you think “Oh, nobody saw. I can’t be bothered to pick it up”, please spare a thought for the innocents following on. I know it’s a pain and it’s not pleasant but if you don’t like it, don’t get a dog. I love dogs but we haven’t got one because guess what? I don’t want to pick up dog poo!
Oh! While I’m at it. A quick note to the splinter group who put the poo in a poo bag then leave the bag on the path… FYI… That’s not really helping anyone. You are simply preserving the contents so that it can lie in wait before rupturing and piping itself onto a child’s shoe like chocolate ganache… Don’t even get me started on the litter element!.. You’ve bagged the poo, you’ve done the hard bit… Just take it with you and throw it in a bin.
As we already appear to be living in such uncertain and tumultuous times, maybe we can at least unite and work together for a world free from unwanted and unnecessary dog poo contamination.
Thank you very much for your attention and have a wonderful dog poo free day!
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