This Blog post will make me a pariah.  Too bad.  I speak truth and sense, as behoves a rational man. Recently, while on holiday on the North-East coast, I collected litter along the golden sands of Embleton Bay.  I was a very unusual walker in that I had no dog.  The most common sort of litter I collected was plastic.  Even more offensive than the ubiquitous plastic bag was the plastic bag filled with dog mess. The law says the dog-owner must remove the mess from the ground.  Lots of owners do this, but some saw fit to leave the bags on the sand.  Similarly, on Chislehurst Common one finds filled bags thrown into the undergrowth or hung on a branch for some other poor sucker to clear. Some owners consider it to be enough to pull the dog on to the path side grass to do its business. This leaves tasty little surprises for anyone rash enough to step off the path to pick up litter.

One sees old folks who, if they bent to clear up their dog’s mess, would not be able to get up again, so they just leave it, expecting others to watch their every step.

It is estimated by the dog food manufacturers that there are 6.8 million dogs in the UK and that almost 25 per cent of households own at least one dog.  The daily output of faeces depends on the size of dog, but it will average about 0.5 kilogram.  Thus, the total daily yield across the UK will be at least 3,000 metric tonnes.

Even if the mess is diligently bagged and binned, that bit of ground has been contaminated.  The health risk is toxocariasis, a round-worm infection that can cause liver damage, digestive problems and even blindness in humans. Even a trace of excrement left on the ground can contain the eggs of the worm, which will cause the condition if ingested by another dog or a human.

Of course, at greatest risk are children, who may pick up the contaminant from sand on the beach, from grass or from the surface of a playground.

Part of the solution is for dog owners to worm their dogs regularly.

When I am Prime Minister I will re-introduce the Dog Licence. Annual renewal will require a substantial fee and evidence that the dog has been wormed. Non-compliance will result in the animal being confiscated and destroyed. There will be only a token fee for sheepdogs.

An even better solution is not to have the dogs in the first place. What is the fascination? The animal has to be fed and watered and walked at least twice a day, regardless of the weather.  The annual bill for dog food nationwide runs into billions. Meanwhile we have foodbanks for humans and millions of people across the world go to bed hungry. While people “home” rescue dogs for the “company” they provide, there are thousands of children desperate to be fostered or adopted.

 

The world has gone mad.