Feeding birds and squirrels but food snaffled by off-lead dogs.

[OrangeGob]

There's a poster at the entrance to my local park asking people to help feed, water and look after the park's wildlife but to do so in a respectful and tidy way.

I take stale bread, cereal dust, left over nuts etc. to the park when I can and leave it on the tree stumps dotted around the park designated for people to leave food. Tree stumps are about waist height so dogs and children can't reach them.

On my dog walk today, three women with big dogs tried to co-opt me into a conversation about the irresponsibility of people who leave food out because their dogs can reach the stumps and snaffle whatever people leave.

I told them I disagreed, that they should have better control of their dogs around the stumps; that feeding is encouraged by various local groups including the Council; and that people generally leave food responsibly and respectfully (i.e. on the designated stumps, not just randomly chucked into the long grass).

Who is BU here?

Goodness me, absolutely not. I genuinely believe WW3 would erupt instantly if I (or someone else) did this 😁

I am surpised at a local council encouraging such feeding of wildlife. Apart from the fact that most people feed entirely the wrong stuff, it is littering - and our council have signs up in the park saying this, telling people not to feed wildlife and threatening prosecution for littering. We have had some really serious rat issues that very nearly killed off a lot of the wildlife because of people leaving food for the wildlife - which was attracting rats that killed them!

They're not being 'snaffled', they're being eaten FFS

Where on earth are you that the council are encouraging you to feed pests?

This is a case of two wrongs not making a right.

Leaving food on stumps isn't a good idea as many PP have said. If someone wants to feed birds and squirrels then there need to be proper feeders hung up and filled with proper food.

However, the dog ladies should be keeping their dogs under better control in a park.

Where the hell do you live? It sounds awful. The dogs are doing you all a favour tbh.

Blimey, round here the council would fine you for littering if you left stale bread, etc around.

Why in god's name your council want to encourage a rodent problem is beyond me. With regards to off lead dogs...hmmme tricky. My mutt's recall is really pretty good, whistle trained 99 % of the time I can call him back from even quite enticing scenarios. Last week he made a beeline for the some birthday cake crumbs and bloody well ignored me. The birthday party park goers were packing up and didn't care about his crumb snuffling but I apologised anyways. No dog is 100% so it's tricky.If you'd deliberately chucked some raisins or mouldy bread on the floor if be pretty upset and your pest increasing crumb throwing would also pisss me off

No dog is 100% so it's tricky

My service dog is 100%. It's supervision and training - if service dogs can be trained to ignore potential food, so can other dogs.

Oh fgs.

My labrador would eat the lot and not even be sorry.

Bread not good for any animal.
But you are going the right way to create a massive rat problem

Feeding rats and impaling hedgehogs - talk about the road to hell being paved with good intentions. And you’re complaining about a few dogs eating leftovers

Surely as a service dog user you'll know they have been specifically chosen, often selectively bred and specialist trained from an early age and even then many dogs don't actually make the grade. Silly comment

The comment was that NO DOG is 100%. Some dogs are. Stupid claim to make, totally inaccurate, and facts show that some dogs can be trained to ignore food. And my service dog was selected yes, but not selectively bred, and trained myself (because there is a dire shortage of places to train service dogs). But my previous dogs were not service dogs and none of them took food without permission. I presume you think that there was something special about that? There was. It is called training. I didn't say that all dogs can be trained to ignore food, but many can - just as they can be trained to good behaviour in all sorts of ways. The fact that owners don't bother to do so is an entirely different matter. If you don't realsie that then you don't know much about dogs and yours is the silly comment.

Regardless of the wisdom of leaving food for wildlife, if there are posters encouraging it supported by the council, they need to control their dogs or go elsewhere if they don't want them eating the food.

A few years ago we were staying in the Scottish highlands in a lodge ( chalet) which was one of four. The owner gave us a jar of peanut butter and told us to put out a slice of bread, covered in peanut butter every evening just outside our lodge and we would see badgers as they would come and eat it. We didn’t get to see the badgers as one of the other lodges had a family with a Labrador staying there. They just let the dog wander around and of course he ate the peanut butter covered bread.

I'd be pissed off if people were being encouraged to leave food scraps out in our local park. Dirty, ugly and probably not especialy helpful to the wildlife.

Reminds me of the birdboxes that sometimes appear in our local woods, just nailed there willy nilly by randomers. It's a woods, ffs, with trees that birds can build nests in or find holes in. Unless these things are done in a controlled and evidence-based way, they aren't supporting nature, they are imposing on it, littering it, trashing it.