I recently got into a bit of a fight with a work colleague on Facebook over dog mess. On holiday we had what should have been a lovely day at the beach, followed by a trip to an iron age hill fort. In both instances dog owners pretty much spoiled it for all of us.
On the beach at Charmouth, as we settled down to have our picnic after a morning of fossil hunting, 7 different dogs that weren’t under control came and nosed around our food. We hadn’t even stopped for very long, ten minutes maybe. As we walked back along the beach later, we spotted several of the owners eating their own lunch. With their dogs on leads so they couldn’t snuffle around their sandwiches.
At Blackberry Camp (the iron age hill fort). I couldn’t properly take in the splendour of the place as almost every 5 paces there was a pile of dog crap. On the one occasion I did look up, I could see several bags of it that were hanging from high branches in some of the trees. With three kids to show round, this became an unnecessarily stressful trip as I didn’t want the mess trodden into my car.
I can’t understand the mentality required to go to all the trouble of bagging up a turd only to throw it a few meters up a tree. What if it hadn’t snagged on something? Did it take more than one attempt to get it to stay up? The mind boggles.
The argument I got into on Facebook involved children being just as badly controlled as dogs. Fortunately I don’t know anybody who lets their children steal from other peoples picnics or indeed simply poo in the woods. Perhaps it’s because we’re from St Albans? (I doubt that’s the reason.)