
On our local TV (westcountry) last night there was a half hour prog devoted to the problems of dog mess, and potential solutions to it. The conclusions they seemed to come to was that people just don't like seeing dog mess (fair enough) but these same people are happy to look at horse mess and cow mess, and town folk even like the smell of cow mess, (strange). And while there is a health risk from dog mess, contact with dogs can reduce the health risk slightly, but the greatest risk is actually from wild animal mess, fox's in particular (chance for the hunting folk here). They said that the subject of dog mess has been blown out of proportion, to the point that you can drop as much litter as you wish and people won't give you a second glance, but woe betide you if your dog poops, even if you do pick it up, you are then a social paraih (sp)
They also interviewed a local council leader who said they had no plans of employing more dog wardens to go out and fine people who didn't pick up, but if they did employ more wardens they would be used to go out and educate people to become more responsible, there by picking up after there dogs, (seems very sensible to me).
An interesting point made, was that letters to members of parliment and local councils complaining about dog mess far out weigh letters concerning other subjects such as the Euro and service for local people etc ( a case of priorities in the wrong place here, perhaps)
One thing I noticed, although it may have just been a case of programme editing, the people arguing against the blanket ban of dogs in public places seemed to put a reasonable arguement with evidence to back them up, where as the people against dogs trotted out the same old cliches and came across as tyranical little party poopers.
Robert