To not pick up dog poo...

[Moonfishstar]

... when in a quiet forest, but to flick it with a stick into dense undergrowth instead?

I don't see any issue with this, but I've got a feeling lots will disagree with me, so I wanted to get some other opinions.

And I'm completely open to taking that risk on board and changing my behaviour. I've asked repeatedly if anyone knows of any serious academic research into this. There are benefits of 'stick and flick ' in rural locations, and harms. I would really like to know where the balance on this lies, if anyone knows?

Besides the pure risk factor, dog shit in urban areas or places where people might step in it (even if health risks were zero) is just unpleasant and an annoyance we don't need.

Dog shit in rural areas is also unpleasant and annoying.

Like the guy who walked the Serpent Trail and picked up 40kg of dog shit over 4 days. That’s a rural long distance path and I doubt he went off piste to deliberately collect more dog shit.

It’s human nature to get lazy about picking up after their dog - if it’s perceived as OK to do that in a heavily wooded area, then that often drifts to being OK to do that in other areas too.

I was making a different point about highways acknowledging the lower risk in country lanes
Going over the speed limit is never ok
However just as highways acknowledge the lesser risk in country lanes by allowing a higher speed limit it’s obvious there would be a lesser risk by doing so in the country than in towns….quite obviously.

It is remote. I live in rural Ireland.

Actually, driving to the speed limit is one of the things that makes rural driving so dangerous- the speed limits and the road conditions rarely align. That’s why you can be charged for driving too fast for the road even if you are under the limit. pootling along at 10mph unnecessarily also isn’t a good idea (although anyone on a country road should be driving with the awareness that there could be a tractor/sheep etc in the middle of the road round the next corner.

@oOmoonhaOo

I’m more likely to kill myself on a country lane than hit another person, compared to if I was doing 40 in a town.

This is a bit of a non argument really, because in built up urban areas you don’t really get the opportunity to get much over the speed limit due of traffic. If you did drive at 40 round the traffic on the pavement then obviously you would be more likely to hit someone than you would on a country road (although its more dangerous to be a pedestrian or cyclist on a country road) but as the stats show this isn’t the reality of driving behaviour in the uk.

Well we own woodlands. Our foresters and consultant wildlife conservationists prefer what they consider the lesser of two evils with flicking and so this is our accepted policy

We however offer limited access, there’s no car park or anything and just locals so we are not talking about lots of people walking through. Everyone has to keep to raised paths as well to keep off the vegetation, roots and ground nesting animals. etc. So there’s no making dens or running around throwing leaves in the air.

It’s a peaceful walk in the woods.

If you’re walking off path though you’ll still be affected by wild animals poo on your shoes.
One animals poo on your shoes is no different from another’s.
whether you’re a poo flicker or picker it’s all still poo

Pick n flick is desirable really As long as it moved from paths and is placed where it can degrade naturally is much better than putting it in a single-use plastic bag

I haven't seen anyone say it's Ok to leave dog shit on trails. What puzzles me is how anyone walking on a trail finds it unpleasant and annoying to think that there may be dog shit several hundred yards away in an area of open forest that's only accessible if you're willing to scramble down steep banks covered in gorse bushes, and through muddy areas at the bottom where you need knee high wellies. Dogs like to investigate places like that but people, on the whole, don't.

I haven't seen anyone say it's Ok to leave dog shit on trails.

That’s because you’ve completely missed my point.

I'm a stick and flick, but then I'm literally miles away from anyone. I would imagine it's a case of seeing if it's likely to impact on others? Then decide.

But middle of the countryside off paths etc putting poo in plastic is crazy.

Your dog poo yes
It sounds weird but I cant touch (with a bag of course) cold dog poo it makes me heeve so if its not mine, I would flick it to

Thank you to those on this thread who've provided good arguments why "stick and flick" has potential environmental issues.

However, I'm not flicking on to places where people would ever go, so there's no need to be concerned that people would ever walk in it, because they couldn't unless they got secateurs or a machete and hacked their way in to the undergrowth!

It not just about walking in it, it is about how dog poo doesn’t just disappear. It goes into the ground and contaminates the water supply. Most rural forests are where water is from. https://youdidwhatwithyourweiner.com/should-i-scoop-pick-up-my-dogs-poop/

“Mmm, here’s a beautiful place with no shit on it. I will flick shit on it so that I can enjoy having an animal at the end of my piece of string. It is worth putting shit somewhere where there was no shit before because it means I can have a living creature at the end of my piece of string”

There's shit everywhere in the countryside. Thinking the natural world has no shit on it is your first mistake. Soil is worm shit.

Sure, but it’s made of the surrounding ecosystem. In balance. Not factory processed slop “with chunks and jelly”.

So it depends on what your dog eats?

if your dog eats exactly the same stuff as the local deer and foxes etc, gets no medication etc then it would just be part of the ecosystem, right ? If you’re bringing alien materials in then it’s not. Dog shit is like human shit, and we don’t like humans leaving their shit everywhere.

What if I dug a 6 inch hole which is recommended for human waste?

Dog owners routinely fail to pick up and fail to cleanly flick. How will they dig holes successfully?

@Flickersy

The nutrient content of the soil is typically low nutrient. Dog poo is high nutrient. It disturbs the natural nutritional content of the soil so that certain plant species die and are over taken by bracken.

There are pathogens and bacteria in dog poo that can cause livestock to abort, and invertebrates/fish in rivers/streams to die when it leaches into the water.
A significant proportion of fox diet is now dog poo. So the dog poo attracts larger number of foxes which can then kill the eggs/chicks of birds - or nesting near a discarded dog poo that attracts the fox.

@oOmoonhaOo

Exactly as @oOmoonhaOo says. We pick up near car parks and paths because 1. there are more people around likely to step in it and 2. these are the areas where there's a high concentration of dogs, and therefore a sufficiently high concentration of dog poo to threaten the environment. Neither of these applies in remote areas.

Reposting my photo of a typical dog walking area in the hope of clarifying what we're talking about. I'm interested to know how you would locate and pick up poo left in the middle distance when you're standing on the path from which the picture was taken. 2 seconds and no effort? You'd have to have superpowers.

Added to which, Forestry England asks people to stick to the paths. I trust them to have evaluated the risk of collecting a poo from a remote place against the risk of leaving it to damage the environment in order to come to that decision.
I think this thread makes it clear why Forestry England doesn't spell that out on their website - there's a huge difference of opinion over what a remote place looks like, and blanket advice based on that would simply be unworkable.

Before anyone comes on to say dogs should stick to the paths too - at certain times and in certain ares they are indeed asked to stick to the paths to protect ground nesting birds. The rest of the time they're OK to run free provided they're under control. Those are Forestry England rules, not mine, so if you disagree please take it up with them.

I think this thread makes it clear why Forestry England doesn't spell that out on their website

Except Forestry England does make it very clear:

Keep our forests clean
Bag and bin your dog's waste. Any public or household waste bin can take bagged dog poo.

It doesn’t say, if your dog takes a dump miles away from you, just forget about it, does it now?

https://www.forestryengland.uk/dog-code