Municipalities pass ordinances that require dog owners to pick up their doggie doos with a plastic bag and then throw it into the trash. Now who the heck thought of this? It’s actually much worse for the environment than leaving the poop where it is because microbes break down the poop and it’s good for the soil. That is where poop is supposed to go. That’s the way nature intended.
Enclosing that natural fertilizer in plastic and disposing it in the trash will prevent it from breaking down and puts more plastic into the waste stream. Dumb, dumb, dumb. If anything, dog walkers need to have access to a garden trowel and simply scoop up some soil to cover the doo. Or simply use a piece of a branch or stone that has the right shape for the job. There is no need to go against nature. It is easier if we go in harmony with it. Stupidity is hammering the environment and we all bear the consequences because of someone’s ignorance in office. “Selectmen” – please think before making stupid ordinances.
Rules affect people. There is more to making rules than trying to solve just one problem. Find out what effects of that rule could cause the environment. Don’t just make simplistic judgments just because you can.
Good point
Personally, I pick up after our little doggie with a paper towel, and then drop it all behind a bush in my own yard, where it will biodegrade out of sight
It is important not to leave poo where people might step on it, or where it might create a health hazard. If the best way for a particularly individual is to use a plastic bag, who am I to tell them to do it my way?
I live across the street from the popular, Three Stones restaurant. One evening I saw a fellow, who had gotten out of a car with New York plates, watch while his dog pooped on the grass in the green space where there are benches. It was about 10 feet from the garbage pail. He walked away, heading to the restaurant as soon as his dog was done with no attempt to deal with the poo.
I approached him, and asked him if he was disrespecting our neighborhood. He told me that he had cleaned up after his dog, even though he and I both knew that he had not.
not all poop is the same
Dog poop is not the same as cow poop and is not a fertilizer. A dog’s diet contains a lot more protein and thus their excrement is a very acidic waste. Cow poop is ok because it started as vegetation unlike a dog’s. Dog poop also contains lots of fecal bacteria and can contain harmful parasites like hookworms, parvo virus, etc. Finally, it takes a long time, up to a year for dog poop to break down/biodegrade.
Not only does dog poop really stink, it is bad for the environment and I suggest throwing it in a garbage can rather than putting it around your bushes.
Everything I have written here is based on scientific facts.
Municipal compost
Makes sense. It’s also common courtesy. I don’t like it on my shoe when left on the sidewalk or in the park. Nor do I like to have to pick up after others so that my kids don’t find it first.
Some suggestions: municipal compost takes it. Though, as I understand that is a higher power composting system than a home one. We pick ours up with leftover newspapers and put it out.
Horse poo is good fertilizer, if they aren’t on meds. Lots of horse people will give it away.
It may not be the same
but it should all go into the same place – the soil. Where does it go after the garbage can pray tell? And if we do it the way the “law” states, we add more garbage that cannot decompose for thousands of years, though it degrades into tiny particles which flow into the water supply and is taken in by fish, which you then eat. Karma d’ya think?
Shoulda placed the turd under
Shoulda placed the turd under his windshield wiper.
Film his reaction, upload to youtube, ?????, PROFIT!
Please pick up after your pet
I have a lawn that is bounded on two sides by a sidewalk that is popular with pet walkers. The vast majority are responsible and clean up after their pets. Unfortunately, not everyone is responsible though, and I usually find the dog poo on my shoe when I mow my lawn. It is disgusting. Some of these individuals walk their animals after dark to escape undetected. Please, be responsible pet owners and pick up after your dogs.
You're not going to like this
but lawns are actually detrimental to the environment. But while we sit on the sixth major extinction, where 200 or more species per day are wiped out, you’re sort of saying everyone should prioritize your lawn. Perhaps you could grow a natural garden in that area? I am not suggesting people should be careless with their doggie-doos. However the law that says dog owners should wrap poop up in plastic and dispose somewhere else is causing another horrid environmental disaster. We must be cognizant of the fact that polluted water will get around to everyone’s faucet. When it comes to the environment, laws need to put the environment first and foremost. Property ownership is secondary. I realize this hurts.
Placing filth on another
Placing filth on another person’s lawn and trying to justify it with this line of reasoning simply does not cut it. There was a time in our country when farm animals were allowed to roam free in the streets and sewage was routinely dumped in the streets. Filth borne disease was very common. I don’t think that we need to go back to that era.
But its natural!Like polio.
But it was natural!
Like polio. (She’s an anti-vaxxer too).
Whatever that all has to do with it
Just another attempt to discredit based on pseudo association and the odd snappy soundbite or two = simplistic thinking.
I'm not suggesting that either
as if anything of the sort looks remotely possible today. I don’t know why you even bring it up.
It’s only filth if you see it that way. Boron is lacking in soils and all “doos” are supposed to go into the soil, not the water, as human doos go. So you’re seeing things through the lens of laws and conventions, but that’s not the only perspective one need have. Otherwise we all might as well be clones. You go by the law I think it’s a load of crock. Simply scribbles written down by some with the idea that all must abide. It’s playschool. I’m an adult and choose to look at things through my own lens. We are destroying the soil and there are no laws addressing this problem. Funny what we choose to make important. But without healthy soils, all these laws are merely playing with us.
dog days
There was a story last week about the Roomba Poop-opoclypse.
The Roomba is a robot that wanders about your floor, vacuuming for you. It has heavy, sticky wheels that help it grip,and it can sense when there is problem area on the floor that needs additional cleaning.
But it doesn’t know what dog poop is.
Owners report that the Roomba will discover a dogs late night accident on the floor, decide that it is a problem area, and go back and forth over it repeatedly to pick up the mess, then it goes back on its merry way exploring the floor. As it continues, it spreads the dog waste everywhere it goes, using its special wheels. When owners wake up/return, they are greeted with a Jackson Pollack painting on their floor.
…
Back in ye old days, we let the dog out in the yard. If an area got messy, we’d clean it, but often rain and such would wash it away. No concern about germs back in the 70’s!
I remember shoveling out an area each winter for the dog, so he could bound out and not be over his head in lake effect snow.
We're much more "arranged" today
so that everything goes in its proper category so that it fits with our paper work.
Please read the ordinance
There’s no need to quibble, folks. I’ve cut and pasted the ordinance, and I understand, having spoken to the animal control person, that if you were to scoop your puppy’s poopies in your own hands, that would satisfy the ordinance. So, plastic bags aren’t needed–put it in your pocket!
Sec. 3- 22. Removal of Dog or Wolf-Hybrid Feces.
a) Removal from Public Property. Any owner or person having custody of any dog or wolf-hybrid shall not permit said animal on any public grounds including public streets, alleys, sidewalks, parks, cemeteries, or any other public grounds within the Town of Brattleboro unless said owner or person in control has in his or her possession a mechanical or other device for the removal of excrement; nor shall said owner or person in control fail to expeditiously remove any such excrement deposited by said dog or wolf-hybrid in any such place. For the purpose of this Section, the reference to mechanical or other device shall include, without limitation, a pooper scooper, a trowel, a shovel, a plastic bag or other appropriate container.
b) Removal from Private Property. Any owner or person having custody of any dog or wolf-hybrid shall not permit said animal on any private property other than the premises of the owner or person having custody of said dog or wolf-hybrid unless said owner or person in control has in his or her possession a mechanical or other device for the removal of excrement; nor shall said owner or person in control fail to expeditiously remove any such excrement deposited by said dog or wolf-hybrid in any such place. For the purpose of this Section, the reference to mechanical or other device shall include, without limitation, a pooper scooper, a trowel, a shovel, a plastic bag or other appropriate container.
c) Failure to Comply. Failure to comply with Section 3-25 (a) or (b) shall be deemed a public
That's no help at all if you think ordinances are just made up
by people who are equals – natives of planet earth. They have no say over what I do. They only work if people forfeit the right to think for themselves and hand their poer over to these ordinance-makers. Funny how you think that all those keystrokes mean anything at all to others just because they mean something to you.
In case anyone is lost,
In case anyone is lost, Denise Ward here is a sovereign citizen. She believes that laws do not apply to her because she has not consented to be governed by them, yet she claims constitutional rights and protections.
And yes, its exactly as ridiculous as it sounds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iFlF_8XzM8
And, finally, now for the “science” behind dog poop
“It’s not an idle question. America’s 83 million pet dogs produce some 10.6 million tons of poop every year.
Indeed cleaning up after our pets has spawned an entire industry with its own professional organization, the Association of Pet Animal Waste Specialists, complete with pun-filled newsletter (“What we doo”).
Still, the risk from poop can be more than just a mess on your shoes. Dogs can harbor lots of viruses, bacteria and parasites — including harmful pathogens like e coli, giardia and salmonella. (A single gram contains an estimated 23 million bacteria.) Studies have traced 20 to 30 percent of the bacteria in water samples from urban watersheds to dog waste. Just two to three days of waste from 100 dogs can contribute enough bacteria, nitrogen and phosphorous to close 20 miles of a bay-watershed to swimming and shellfishing, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
It also can get into the air we breathe: a recent study of air samples in Cleveland, Ohio, and Detroit, Mich., found that 10 to 50 percent of the bacteria came from dog poop.”
Full text:
The Poop Problem: What To Do With 10 Million Tons of Dog Waste
: http://www.livescience.com/44732-eliminating-pet-poop-pollution.html
Yes and the best way to neutralize that
is to bury the poop in soil. Perhaps this is so simple that it is rendered unfathomable in today’s overly complicated and twisted ethos.
Trowel? Check!
How do you envision people doing this? Carry a trowel is one of your suggestions. Okay- so we’re walking our dogs; trowel in hand and the dog stops to relieve himself. Now what? If it’s on a sidewalk do we just dig up a small patch of someone’s yard and cover the dog excrement with that? Do we – along with our trowel- carry a small bag of soil to pour over the mess and then just leave it on the sidewalk? Do we pick up the excrement with said trowel and gently place it on the nearest lawn? Your posts makes no sense. Perhaps you don’t mind stepping in dog feces or smelling it in your yard. Most people do. Not to mention that once one dog has used a particular spot as their bathroom then other dogs will follow. Then what? All of the sidewalks will just be covered with dirt encrusted piles of feces? That’s the kind of town you want to live in? Some rules and regulations make sense. The ones regarding disposal of animal waste is one of them.
Of course this leaves out the risks of human poop
which is flushed into the water! Could anything be dumber? Maybe powering a civilization on poisonous energies like fossil fuels and nuclear when we have oodles of free energy abounding all around us.
Evidently we can add "sewage
Evidently we can add “sewage treatment” and “septic systems” to the long list of things that Dward doesn’t understand.
Final Solution
Well it’s looking like we may need to start eating dogs to reduce their population and the amount of waste created by them.
What to do with all this pet sh*t?
There isn’t a one size fits all solution of what to do with dog poop. The poop issue really isn’t about dog poop. It’s about pet excrement. I think this article started because of DWards aversion to laws that “do not apply to her because she has not consented to be governed by them,“ and only marginally about the real do’s and don’ts of dog poop.
DWard’s misunderstanding of “sewage treatment” and “septic systems” notwithstanding, pet poop does not have universal sewage and septic systems for pet owners to utilize.
Therefore, the issue is far more complex and serious than just DWard’s suggestion to “bury the poop in soil.” There are probably as many (or more) pet owners in paved towns and cities as there are pet owners in suburbia and rural areas. Most people are not going to be composting (putting into the ground) their pet poop themselves.
Because pet poop seriously affects the health of the environmental three estates of our Air, Land and Water, we’re really back then, to what kind of laws and regulations are needed to protect the environment and people’s health, and, what are the science, R&D and physical plants needed to overcome this problem.