Dog poo – a social experiment
In my previous post, I shared some photos of the beautiful woodland I love to visit as often as possible. I used to go past a dog poo bin on my way up there, but it got taken away. I’m guessing that was because dog poo (in UK, if tied up in a bag) can be deposited in any public waste bin, and there are two of these less than two hundred metres away, one either side of the road.
Surprisingly, even though the bin was gone, people continued to leave poo bags around the post that the bin had been attached to. I was interested to see bags now come in colours other than black. Blue and yellow appear to be the favourites in this neighbourhood. Odd to think of choosing a colour, I mean, if you consider your favourite colour to be blue, then maybe you like to wear blue tee-shirts?
I haven’t had a dog in recent years but still have a stash of black bags. Not only are they used when Alfie occasionally visits, they are also great for protecting my phone when I’m out in the rain, or for filling up the car if the garage doesn’t supply gloves. I also mostly wear black, rather than blue or yellow, so they are an essential matching accessory 😉
Back when we had a dog, we lived in a village where the Facebook group noticeboard seemed overly dedicated to dog poo discussions. I would read the comments with wonder at the passion a fresh dog turd could ignite in people. Graphic photos as well, with speculation about the dog’s diet!
When I used to walk Gandalf, I would sometimes pick up after other people’s dogs. I figured if I was already carrying a bag or two of shite, one more wouldn’t make any difference. Then another dog walker told me I shouldn’t do that, because it was enabling the lazy ones to leave it there for someone else. I guessed she had a point, and it also wasn’t too pleasant picking up a hard cold one with no associated dog, so I stopped doing it.
This of course is different. People were taking the trouble to bag it, but then leaving the bags at the location where the poo bin used to be. Were they expecting the poo fairy to come and take it away? I knew I’d make a really good poo fairy. But if I removed it, would that make them think it was okay to dump it there? I’ve no desire to take on permanent poo-fairy duties, especially as I don’t currently have a dog.
I decided to clear it up. It was a social experiment with the feel-good factor of being the local womble. If I removed it, would they leave some more? Armed with a bin liner and disposable gloves, I picked up twenty-one bags of crap. It would have been a nice round twenty, but included one I’d seen the previous week that had been strategically placed at the edge of a track, as if to give the impression they were going to pick it up on the way home.
That was last weekend, so this morning’s trot to the beautiful woods had an added point of interest. I was expecting at least a couple of bags – probably the yellow ones with contents from a Labrador-sized dog. But no, there were none at all. Wonderful!
My conclusion is that no-one wanted to lay down the first bag. I wonder what would happen if I left one there? Would there be twenty bags by next weekend? No, I’m not going to try it!
If you’ve got this far, thank you for reading crap! To end with something nice, here’s an old photo of Gandalf, playing with a lump of wood he found in a field one frosty morning:
He weighed about forty-five kilos but was so light on his feet we have a lot of photos where his feet aren’t touching the ground:
Word on a Whim 