Dogs and poo and public areas. Why isn't this practice questioned more?

[Exgiraffe]

Just returned from a walk (with dc, no dogs as I don't have one) and started to think about how extraordinary it is that people take dogs on walks in public parks and green spaces specifically to give them the opportunity to poo!!

Why isn't this practice questioned more by the community? Surely dog owners are the minority so why aren't communities discussing this and requiring dog owners to change their behaviour and encourage dogs to poo at home.

This is especially an issue in cities where green grass and space are limited. Even if dog owners scoop up the poo there would be remnants on the grass where unsuspecting picnickers sit and children play upon.

Who says dogs constitute a nuisance?

Have the government issued a statement confirming the above?

Certainly many parts of dog food are byproducts of the human meat industry. For instance, DDog loves a pizzle stick (dried bulls penis) to chew on and is quite partial to dried tripe. Most of his treats fall into the dried offal category (liver, beef heart etc) which are very unfashionable. I do wonder how much of those cuts would simply end up in cheap sausages if not used for the dog food industry.

It's always harder to tell with the main food exactly what part of the animal has gone in. I'm very fussy with what I'll feed DDog and it has to be quite high meat content as he's rather highly strung and low quality foods render his behaviour awful. I do, however, steer clear of those that boast they use human grade meat.

DDog got very lucky on Christmas eve - I found a member of Tesco staff about to bin some 80% reduced cooked chicken at the end of the day. I took it and considered it an environmental decision - I don't eat meat but DDog was happy to prevent it going to landfill!

@UselessTrees Yes, many human activities are unsustainable. However, I don't drive (except as part of my job, which I would count as my employers carbon footprint, not mine) and walk / cycle / train everywhere. I don't eat meat. I turn the heating down. Much of my leisure time is taken up with walking DDog rather than engaging in more carbon intensive activities. I suspect my emissions, even with a terrier, are lower than average.

With regards to the poo bags and waste disposal - I'd still need to get the poo home in a sanitary, sealed (non smelly) manner and I don't know how I'd do that without poo bags. Even once composted, my garden is an entirely concreted yard so it would eventually have to be binned anyway. I was of suggestions of poo bags that really do biodegrade in a sensible period of time.

Interesting post Avocados

I agree it’s the sheer number of them that seems to be the issue though, again going back to seeming to be fashionable to have a dog without any thought for other factors of dog ownership and then you have a lot of people just breeding dogs now for the money,

Example I have a friend who got a dog from a litter maybe 9 months ago, the family she bought it from have just had another litter from the same mother! Surely they would have had the dog neutered if it had been an accident the first time around but why would they when they are getting £400 a pop per dog????

Agree that puppyfarming needs shutting down. No-one would dispute that ever (well apart from the low lives that make money from the poor animals ).
Also animals also live longer nowadays too, when I was small if you had a pet with a chronic disease or cancer it was PTS, now animals are offered cancer treatment and all manner of operations to prolong life.

Pet industry is a massive money maker.

Maybe these things need better looked at then, pet ownership should be a luxury as it used to be

This idea that the dog population has somehow increased exponentially is bizarre; all the stats say the increases have been much more modest. Bearing in mind that the UK human population has increased rapidly, it seems like a real terms fall in dog ownership. www.pfma.org.uk/historical-pet-ownership-statistics

People are also looking at the past with rose tinted glasses - it used to be that spay / neuter was unheard of, and dogs were allowed to roam neighborhoods at will. The only plausible outcome of that is that there were far more accidental litters than there are now.

@Cersei There are, and have always been, unscrupulous people looking to make a quick and unethical buck in such circumstances. Breeding two litters so close together is against all accepted practices. The government is tightening up on these things (licencing) and HMRC is starting to take an interest as the money is rarely declared to the taxman.

Avocados The stats from that site indicate that dog numbers have gone from 4.7 million in 1965 to 8.5 million in 2017. A rise of 80%. The UK human population went from 55.34m in 1965 to 66.02m in 2017, a rise of 19%.

for the purposes of the pet industry dogs are merely a conduit to channel money from the pockets of the owners into the coffers of the pet industry
They are delighted with this explosion in the dog population numbers
further there are large amounts of under the counter profits to be made from breeding dogs

You are fixated by the Pet Industry!!! You make them sound as evil as big pharma

the Pet Industry.....as evil as big pharma

This thread is getting hilarious now

@Useless No, it doesn't. On the page I linked to it says
"Note that these statistics cannot be directly compared to our recent data as a different method of collection has been used since 2008."

My money is going to be transferred to one industry or another. Whether I choose to spend my money with the fashion, interior design, travel or pet industry is really none of your concern.

I'll note that DDog was a rescue dog who came via a friend and I paid the princely sum of £0 for him, so there's no under the counter profits on this mutt.

Pet industry capitalises on pet ownership......bugger me sideways, I'm shocked. Shocked i tell you!

"Note that these statistics cannot be directly compared to our recent data as a different method of collection has been used since 2008."

Well then that's not terribly helpful given that the data set ends in 2002, which is quite some time ago now.

This is the latest report which says there's been an 11% rise in the number of families owning a dog in a single year.

www.pfma.org.uk/news/pet-population-2018

It does seem like dog ownership has increased (in my perception), and Avocados data does seem to bear that out.

I would agree that some of this growth is because certain dog breeds appear fashionable; quite de rigueur to have a bull dog or a pug or perhaps one of those made up variants of dog which are commonly a fusion of two breeds, that hitherto didn't exist. I expect a flea in my ear for saying this

From a dog welfare perspective it concerns me - for instance nobody living in a city has any business in owning a Siberian husky and trailing it around the park on a lead (when it needs a minimum of 2 hours exercise per day)

I would like to see dog licencing introduced - and moreover not universally available but only issued for a fee after you have passed a theory test on dog ownership. That would sort out the serious owners from the trend followers. I expect there are all sorts of reasons that I haven't considered which would make that unworkable....

LimitIsUp - I totally agree with you.

It's difficult to have a sensible debate with some posters on here who see all dogs as 'vermin' and all dog owners culpable.

However I do agree that there are far too many irresponsible dog owners out there who see dogs as fashion accessories that are expected to fit into the owner's life rather than have their particular needs met. I'd love to see the reintroduction of dog licences and the type of assessment reputable rescue organisations apply to prospective owners applied to all potential owners. (Though how that would work in practice I don't know.).

I really hope there is a serious clamp down on puppy farming and backstreet breeding.

@Useless somehow it's still only an 11% rise reported between 10/11 and 16/17. I'm starting to have my doubts about some of their data, however, as I can see no reason why the dog population would have jumped by 1m in a year and the cat population by 0.7m in the same year www.pfma.org.uk/historical-pet-population

@Limit Many who work in dog welfare are concerned by some of the dog breed trends - pugs and French bulldogs because they can't breathe properly and have other health issues too, huskies because (after Game of Thrones unintentionally made them fashionable) unsuitable owners got them and there are now many in rescue because they need a lot of input, and designer crossbreeds such as cockapoos because they are almost exclusively bred by unscrupulous breeders.

That said, when it comes to breeds that need a lot of input a good owner will make it work almost anywhere, and a crap owner will mess it up almost anywhere. I have a dog that needs two hours a day (a Jack Russell, not a husky!) and we make it work when living in an inner city flat with a tiny concrete backyard. You'd struggle to restrict ownership on the basis of breed and postcode - what happens if someone has to move house for instance, is their well cared for dog confiscated? Can't see many people supporting that. Better education on the importance of choosing a breed right for the circumstances of the owner and how to do of that would be a better answer. Unfortunately the first dog professional a new owner comes into contact with is often a breeder who is not impartial, and by the time they meet breed-impartial professionals it's too late.

I'd also be thrilled if people had to take a theory course before getting a dog - and a good quality puppy training class when getting a puppy. There are a great many well meaning owners who just don't have a clue about things like the basics of dog body language and training using positive reinforcement.

Perhaps more achievably I would like to see vets routinely check that microchip details are up to date - by looking at the chip database not just taking the owners word for it. A great problem with reuniting strays is that microchip details are out of date and many people seem to think that now the microchip law is in place an ID tag is unnecessary when it remains a legal requirement.

Mandatory theory & proper puppy training classes would be great. (As would clamping down on puppy farms etc.)

I am one of the non-dog owners on the thread (had a dog as a kid, was in hindsight not as well cared for as she should have been. Never mistreated but we never trained her properly, didn't really understand her needs etc).

I'd prefer to see fewer dog owners overall (or at least: fewer irresponsible ones). Frankly in my experience people who can't be arsed to pick their dog's shit up, or train them properly, or pay attention to them in the park seem to also on the whole have dogs who do not look well cared for - struggling to breathe/waddle due to excessive weight, not groomed, yanked around - and that makes me a bit . Maybe unsurprising that lack of consideration for others goes hand in hand with lack of consideration for a dependent animal I suppose. There would still be some of those with dog licensing/mandatory training but I suspect the "fashion accessory/Instagram prop" owners would rapidly drop away.

I'm not really sure the Instagram prop thing is a key factor. Instagram tends to be a young person's thing. I'm in my mid-late 20s and it's rare I see a dog walker in the park who is my age or younger - and when I do it often turns out to belong to their parents. I live in a big city so there is no shortage of dog walkers. A great many of my friends say they'd love a dog but couldn't make it work due to their lifestyle, so practicality does usually trump desire.

Perhaps there is a disconnect between who makes the purchasing decisions and who walks it - but I don't think the social media aspect is a big as some imagine.

Some pretty shit dog trainers out there too - I took my dog to three different classes and they were all bloody useless, they could show you how to train a dog who was food focused but had not a clue how to train a dog of "independent spirit(basically a cat in disguise)" and I'd be pissed off if I was forced to pay for a shit instructor - bad enough to do it voluntarily! Several books, youtube videos, good advice on here, facebook groups and dvds imported from USA I now have a mostly beautifully behaved dog, with pretty good recall, it almost broke me!

All the insta-dog owners I know drop their dog at doggy day care.

They don’t actually walk their own dogs. Geesh, how menial.