{"id":3743,"date":"2016-02-15T08:00:45","date_gmt":"2016-02-15T08:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=3743"},"modified":"2016-02-15T11:25:09","modified_gmt":"2016-02-15T11:25:09","slug":"doggy-doo-or-doggy-dont","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=3743","title":{"rendered":"Doggy doo, or doggy don\u2019t"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Poo<\/a>

Poo bin\/damesnet<\/p><\/div>\n

It is always disappointing when things seem to be going backwards rather than forwards. And nowadays it seems to be happening at every level \u2013whether we are talking about global peace, disease control, wealth distribution, xenophobia, racism, nuclear proliferation, barrier erecting… and dog shit on the pavement.<\/p>\n

\u201cI beg your pardon?\u201d splutters the Damesnet-reading Colonel of Tunbridge Wells (not sure how many subscribers of this ilk we\u2019ve managed to sign up, but I live in hope).<\/p>\n

The fact is that at street level – literally – this was a war I\u2019d thought we\u2019d won. When my kids were little and we pounded the thoroughfares of south London one of the first things they learned to say was \u2018Mind the muck\u2019. I became adept at pushing their buggy around the piles of doggy doo left scattered on the pavement, and once they grew too old to be wheeled around they learned the skill of hopping smartly to one side to avoid the offending crap.<\/p>\n

Then, wonder of wonders, things began to improve. The local council created dog-free areas in the parks and commons so we could let our little darlings play in the grass without fear of contracting toxocariasis. The council also put up signs warning offending dog owners of prosecution if their pets fouled the streets, and they installed special bins for waste disposal, to make it as easy as possible.<\/p>\n

And that really seemed to work \u2013 the whole issue was raised in the general public\u2019s awareness and everyone rose to the occasion. We parents perfected the art of looking askance at people whose dogs were crapping on the pavement, thereby shaming if not actually naming. The streets became cleaner and everyone lived happily ever after.<\/p>\n

This last, of course, only happens in fairy tales, and nowadays it is as if that brief period of time when the pavements were shit-free never happened, rather like in the early 90s when the Berlin Wall came down and we all naively thought that the world\u2019s problems were solved for ever.<\/p>\n

Yes, the wheel has turned full circle, the pavements are littered with little piles of poo and I\u2019m back to perfecting the hop, skip and jump technique as I walk along. \u201cBut why oh why?\u201d I hear you asking. Well, there are many theories, none of which I believe in; one such example is that as areas become gentrified, people are better educated in the risks posed by dog poo, and they modify their attitudes and behaviour accordingly. Then once an area has become so upmarket that the dog owners themselves are no longer actually walking their own dogs, this task is taken over by dog walkers, who can\u2019t actually afford to live in the area where they walk the dogs and are therefore not that bothered about cleaning up after the mess that might be created.<\/p>\n

An east London borough is introducing a scheme where people who walk their dogs in the local parks will have to have their pets\u2019 DNA tested, the aim being that those who allow their dogs to foul public areas could be tracked down and fined. Now I find this somewhat bizarre \u2013 from a financial point of view it is hard to see how much revenue it could generate when set against the costs of implementation, and frankly, actually getting people to pay up could be tricky. There are certain dog owners I wouldn\u2019t want to go near, let alone demand money from them, and they are the ones I see coolly watching while their dogs poop.<\/p>\n

So if anyone knows how best to deal with this, answers on a postcard please.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

one of the first things they learned to say was \u2018Mind the muck\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":3749,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,55,56],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3743"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3743"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3759,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3743\/revisions\/3759"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}