Near me they are having a bit of a drive on dog poo. someone has been round and spray painted the pavement where they find a pile of poo with a sign saying pick up your poo. All well and good as I hate to see it as much as anyone else. However looking around this morning at one of these signposted piles  in the immediately surrounding area I counted another 2 poo piles but there was also over 100 items of other human rubbish including lager cans, crisp packets sandwich packs, a pile of human vomit, condom wrappers, fag ends, plastic pop bottles.

Now I an NOT saying dog owners should not bother to pick up their poo but I do wonder if there is a double standard here when there is so much other rubbish all around. In a week or so the poo will have disappeared but the rubbish will still be there years later. I just get fed up of do owners being continually picked on and blamed for mess when the Human animal is far worse

Could not agree more! Both are unacceptable but many people prefer to pick on dog owners rather than tell their own children, other adults to pick up their rubbish or indeed not drop rubbish themselves.
Jeff.

Yes rubbish is revolting whichever way you look at it BUT it isn't always wilful.  The new refuse and recycling collection lorries allow for escapees and most of the recycling bins are open to the elements.  However in the amounts you'd usually see on the streets this type of human waste doesn't present a health hazard whereas dog poo does.  Also volunteers are often very willing to pick up general rubbish but very few will pick up dog poo.

I'm all for shooting litter louts of any kind!!  :)

In all seriousness I think there aren't double standards - I've seen officials acting on dropped rubbish AND owners who fail to pick up poo.  I just think dog poo can be more easily attributed and as an offence is so much easier to manage.  Dog poo doesn't get blown out of inadequate rubbish bins...

I always pick up after my dogs and it narks the hell out of me to see discarded crisp bags, juice carton's, broken glass and worst of all dirty nappies, dropped by filthy humans, these people take the bother to come and walk in the beautiful Lomond hills, and think nothing of leaving rubbish, spoiling it for everyone else and causing a hazard to wildlife, and people say dogs are dirty !. Don't even get me started on workies who throw their newspapers and Greggs bags out the window of their moving vans !.

I don't think litter poses the same health problems as dog poop.

I know too much litter is dropped, but where I walk the biggest problem is dog poo. No excuse atall, some people should be ashamed of thierself, it only takes a moment to pick up, if people bothered to clean up after thier dog then perhaps councils could concentrate on tackling the other litter.

Dog poo may break down on it's own when left outside, but that's no piece iof mind when you've tracked one home on the bottom of your shoe and walked all around your home - GRRRR how cross that makes me

> I don't think litter poses the same health problems as dog poop.

It can do if like me you live or work not too far from a fast food outlet. Dropped packages (sometimes with scraps, but not always), attracts foxes, and other vermin including rats, which I would think are worse for human health. Where I was working in the evenings I would regularly see foxes and rats checking out the litter to see what they could find. They also pooped every where as well, and if I do stand in poop I would prefer dog poop to fox poop.

We used to have a law banning spitting in the street as that caused problems for human health yet you see people spitting in the street and for that matter of sports fields almost every day. 

it narks the hell out of me to see discarded crisp bags, juice carton's, broken glass and worst of all dirty nappies, dropped by filthy humans

LOL...I used to organise community clean-ups several times a year and was often one of the few to actually show up. I lost track of the number of times I was asked whether I was on some kind of a probation service project...as though no one would ever do this unless forced to.

I often end up picking up litter, although I do draw the line at soiled nappies !, give me a dog poop any day lol

I try to pick up and bin at least one piece of litter every day (if everyone did that the streets would be much cleaner!). I think littering is the most abused and unenforced law of all, and is far more dangerous (think broken glass, syringes etc) than biodegradable dog poo.

">give me a dog poop any day lol

Me too, I'd rather see that and try to avoid it cos it's stationary than see all of the rats scampering around our local drivethru McDonalds.

I pick up and put in poo bins, IF THERE IS ONE ABOUT, failing that I walk carrying the sniffy parcel and bring it home to the wood burner :(

At least dogs drop 'litter' because they have to, humans do it because they're ignorant!!

> Dog poo may break down on it's own when left outside, but that's no piece iof mind when you've tracked one home on the bottom of your shoe and walked all around your home - GRRRR how cross that makes me <IMG alt=mad src="/images/mad.gif">

When my children were small the worst thing was bringing it home on the pushchair wheels (bearing in mind I walked two dogs with it myself and picked up after them) and often having to park it indoors as it was, as the child was asleep.

Used to walk my dogs with a friend before she went to work, often in the dark/semi dark, yet we we could still pick up after 8 dogs by using aid of a torch and running a hand above the squatted area to feel for the heat.

> When my children were small the worst thing was bringing it home on the pushchair wheels

Oh yes, I forgot about that, how gross. It takes forever to scrape out of the wheels :(

>we could still pick up after 8 dogs by using aid of a torch and running a hand above the squatted area to feel for the heat.

LOL, I resorted to searching for a Buster dropping the other night by heat-seeking, he had got excited at a passing, barking loose dog, did a play-bow and knocked me away from 'the spot'. I couldn't find 'it' with the torch in the clumpy grass.
How relieved I am to hear that there other people out there hovering thier hands around in the dark 'looking' for dog poop! :-D

The worst has to be leaves, fallen leaves make poo completely invisible.

Have moved my bins because of the dark!!!
They were half way across my new garden (moved in in May) Now I go to work near enough in the dark and home in the dark MTTanf F the bins have to be put out on the T=tuesday night. Not good when I only picked the dog muck up on the saturday!!!!!
And I HATE the smell of my own dogs.
To have my kids come home in the car )and they are 13 and 16, so only step in it when walking in the dark with their clubs) I cannot stand!!!!
GGGRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

We often take carrier bags to the local beauty spot to clean up especially during school holidays.I never understand why people carry full packets and bottles out to the woods but can't manage to carry them back!

My other bugbear is cigarette butts ! why do people think it is acceptable to drop them wherever they go ?
Please dont start me on the current recyling scheme in my borough our landfill bin now gets collected every two weeks so any poo sits in there  in a plastic bag for up to 2 weeks and thats only the start of the recycling problem around here

We have the same trouble with the bin, except that we don't get a recycling bin because we are on a country route and not in a town or village. We get a bin emptied every fortnight and we expected to take everything else to the recycling centre ourselves. Very energy efficient !!
I would much rather that people left their dog poo alone if the alternative is to bag it up and then leave the bag - often hanging from a tree for some bizarre reason !!

omg sassinak then I am lucky.  I just have let me think 7 recepticals  of varying size down my side way to put the rubbish in depending on what it is.
I cant imagine how much time I spend cleaning and separating rubbish to put in the right bin. Then remebering is it a green week or is it ablue week (different things go out accordingly)
In fact much more of this and I shall give up 

The 2-week thing continues to drive me mad.  My dogs' poo goes into a carrier bag, that lasts about 2/3 days, then the bag goes into an emtpy 15kg kibble sack, then I take those to the tip.  If I put all the poo in the rubbish bin then it gets too heavy and they refuse to take it :-( Never mind if I miss a collection!

I put my garden poo in a carrier bag and every couple of days I take it to a local dog bin. I keep it in a lidded bucket and drive there. If the lid is on tight I don't have a odour problem in my car. I couldn't keep poo in my wheelie bin for 2 weeks.

When I lived in north Cornwall I used to find plastic bags washed up on the beach full of dog poo. Why oh why when they managed to pick up and bag the poo did they find it necessary to throw it into the sea. But still not as bad as the used medical stuff thrown off ships. I often found used bandages and once a urine bag complete with urine washed up. There were places that I would never let my dogs run free.

So true - I walk past signs saying you will be fined for not picking up dog poo to a trail through hazards of empty take-away containers, remains of food and vomit - which Meg will grab if given the chance, and broken glass from the bottles and glasses dropped where some drunk has thrown them away.  It makes me feel so cross - especially when someone gives me a dirty look walking around some dog poo - that I had nothing to do with. 

As for cats - I am fed up with people taking on too many cats - after all they don't have to clean up after them!  Everytime I do a bit of gardening I come back to find that a cat has used that patch for a toilet.  My veggie patch stinks.  Then I see a neighbour getting himself not one but 2 new kittens which get chucked out of the door before they are old enough to wander other people's property. 
Whoops - I have gone off on my angry old woman rant again. Sorry.