Dog mess: PLEASE bag it and bin it!

Dog owners need to take responsibility and clean up after their pets.

We’ve even seen it just a foot away from poo bins in the park, the park where our kids go to play.

As dog owners we all know when our furry friend is getting ready to have a poo. This should be the signal to reach for the bags. But we’ve all seen people conveniently turning away just as their dog is getting ready for a poo and ‘unfortunately’ miss seeing the event because they didn’t realise what was happening!

We’ve all seen people doing a 360 to check if anyone has observed their dog doing their business. If the coast is clear on they walk leaving the waste behind!

Clearly there are places that we walk our dogs where it is not always necessary to pick it up. Walking up in the hills or through the countryside for example, as long as it’s not on clearly defined walkways. However, streets and public areas can hardly be included in this catagory. As dog owners surely it is our responsibility to clean up after our pets. They can’t do it, after all! It is something that has to go hand in hand with having a dog and if we don’t want to do it or can’t be bothered then we shouldn’t have one.

As I have mentioned before on other topics, the key to ensuring this problem becomes less of an issue is to make it socially unacceptable. Blaming it on a lack of dog wardens is totally missing the point. You would need an army of them to be remotely effective in stopping it. Blaming it on the lack of poo bins and using this as justification not to bag the poo is dillusional. We need to take personal responsibility and if we all did, then there wouldn’t be any dog poo lying around at all. It really is that simple.

The fact that there is so much of it lying around is nobody’s fault other than the owners who don’t pick it up.

Confronting those that don’t bag their dog’s waste is probably what we would all want to do but most of us don’t. The fear of a load of abuse back, or worse, is reason enough not to. It’s a shame but totally understandable. For this reason the problem cannot, realistically, be policed either by the authorities or members of the public. It has to become a major social no no.

Come on, play the game folks!