DDespite a cold aloof demeanor, my dog, Oscar, is a prodigious poet. I dread to think how much of my one wild and precious life has been spent standing in all seasons, squatting it, rounding the bony spine, gazing one-handedly at the fields below, thinking What was his rocky stare telling: shame, defiance, gratitude, joy? However, I can easily estimate the number of times I have held a thin plastic bag on my hand and ejected it: at least four times daily for 13 and a half years. That adds up to over 18,000 bags of hot shit. Well, mainly the bags: Like any dog owner, there have been times when I’ve been caught short of tissues, leaves, and even, most recently, a surgical mask (quite effective, actually). forced to use.
Of course I pick up, even if it’s hard. I know everyone picks up. Whatever you ask, he picks up. And yet, dog poo is everywhere—more, if not more, than ever. I’ve been curious ever since my friend Rob, a sociologist, first drew my attention to the dreadful flowering of buds during the COVID lockdown. They were justified in early 2021: we were widely considered “Emergencies in the grip of a dog messAs a sociologist, Robb called it a “statement of populist nihilism” in the face of an existential threat. Other, more likely explanations include a drop in the level of social surveillance in unusually empty lockdown streets, allowing people to take their instincts. allows indulging in irresponsibility, and Epidemic dog ownership explodesInexperienced owners discover and reject this unpleasant side when it comes to caring for their new companions.
But the situation doesn’t seem to be improving since then: From local press coverage and the NextDoor app to neighborhood Facebook and WhatsApp groups, it’s clear dog poo is a live problem. Our anger at this fecal violation of the social contract is real: “waste”, “mess”, “pollution” – choose your euphemism – have been a community flashpoint for decades and show no signs of abating. Non-dog people hate it, obviously, and so do responsible dog owners, because it sucks us in with the same brush. My favorite reaction is the traditional British Paddington stern stare and mumble; My French husband prefers to hand over poo bags with steely politeness.
“This is the most passive-aggressive topic in neighborhood social media,” says a friend, whose local group is clamoring for a “return to the 80s,” dog poo-wise. (Side note: Dog poo turned white in the 1970s and ’80s not because it was longer-lived, but because of the high levels of calcium in dog food at the time.) 2017 UK Survey found that 47% of adults think dog fouling in public places is one of the most annoying things, worse than litter, pollution, traffic and smoking.
A call to dog-poo tales brings me various targets of anger: at poo bags hanging from “fuck trees”, at those without remorse and sneakily pretending not to look. A reporter tells of a war of strife with a neighbor who has forced him to acquire a “dedicated shovel” to throw back at his property. “We’ve been doing this for over 20 years,” she writes. “Poo wars are forever.” They’re international, too: An acquaintance sent me a Florid story “full of steaming feces” from the Netherlands of a neighborhood near Rotterdam, where an end-of-tether local posted a box of shit via the suspected criminal’s letterbox .
Is Dog Poo Really That Bad? It’s terrible to step in, and exposure carries little risk. toxocariasis, an unpleasant infection that can cause blindness and seizures. But it is organic matter: certainly not as bad as plastic waste, which takes six lifetimes to decompose. recent Research It’s not that easy to discover on popular dog-walking routes in nature reserves in Belgium. Excessive levels of nitrogen and phosphorus in dog feces can upset the delicate balance at these sites, allowing some plants (such as brambles, nettle and hogweed) to overtake more delicate species, which need less nutrients to survive. environment is required.
“You get a loss of biodiversity and lower species richness in these ecosystems,” researcher Peter de Freon from Ghent University recently explained to the BBC.
So what can we do? In 19th-century London, “pure finders” would collect dog poo (known as “pure”, improbably for its cleaning properties) and sell it to tanneries, up to one shilling for a bucket. The closest contemporary equivalent was probably Taipei’s 2011. dog-poo lotteryWhere the participants got a ticket for each bag handed out, giving them a chance to win a gold ingot.
In a cash-strapped 21st century London, things are more dreary. Camden Council – Once againLondon reportedly second in the league table of dog-poo complaints — tells me that its strategy includes “providing the Love Clean Streets app for our residents, through which they can report street dog litter to the council for cleaning. In addition, we offer free biodegradable poop- Scoops provide bags and cans of pink chalk spray that residents can use to warn passers-by of dog mess and expose it to our road-cleaning teams who regularly patrol the borough. and educate residents about responsible dog ownership.” Offenders can also be fined up to £100 if caught under the act.
history of more Innovative solutions are littered with failure like the land around the dog-poo bin. Sometimes there is a flurry of enthusiasm over the choice of Poo Powered Street Lamp or a Drone Duo – An aerial drone to find the poo and a ground to pick it up – so far nothing has come of it. In the 1980s, Paris deployed “motocrots”—motorbike-mounted Hoovers—to tackle its infamous sidewalk problem. Their failure was attributed to cost and poor efficacy (a poorly positioned nozzle caused a Poo-Mageddon), but, more French form, to issues of masculinity. “When you see a biker in his helmet and leather gear, it’s so heroic…. Riders were battling cognitive dissonance: “I have to be Rambo on my motorbike as well as make me do something like Being told that is a bit demeaning.”
What if you could identify with certainty whose dog is responsible? You already can: that is Pooprints business model. The American company registers the dog’s DNA in its World Pet Registry using cheek swabs (10 seconds on each cheek). After that, participating housing communities and local authorities can take a sample of the fake deposit (the website has a graphic detailing how to shake the samples until you have a “milkshake-like consistency,” sorry) and match them. It is already used in some private rental developments in the UK, and a small number of local authorities in ireland,
The obvious question is why would anyone sign up to get caught. PooPrints offers treats and discounts to owners who agree, but according to Roger Southam, who works with the company in the UK, the main draw is the tangent: “DNA registration is a very useful thing for theft and loss; it is the only verifiable means of identification that is not going to change. You are signing on for all the benefits of keeping your dog safe.” According to Southam: “Simply publicizing the existence of pooprints within a community or a council, we see a 70-80% reduction in dog fouling.”
The problem with scaling up is who pays, with some councils eager to foot the bill. PooPrints CEO Jay Ratinger argues that since pet licenses were abolished, a wider debate is needed at the expense of the growing number of man’s best friends. “Communities need to start thinking about the impact of pet populations on our budgets: How are those costs going to be made up?”
Is there a less crap, less crap solution? i ask Louise Glazebrook, dog behaviorist and dog diet evangelist. “Dogs that are well fed on a fresh diet, especially on a raw diet, have excellent poo,” she tells me. “It’s firm, small, cools down quickly and is very easy to lift.” If your dog’s stool is loose, like Mr. Whippy’s but warm, it’s a problem. She says that kibble (dry feeding) and canned foods can potentially lead to “a mountain of wet, muddy poo that no one wants to raise. If we pay more attention to what we put in our dogs, So we can pay less attention to what we pick up, because it’ll be easy and no hassle. It’s only a partial solution. Oscar, being both fussy and French, clings to cheap human-grade food Insists, but still produces mountains of (high quality) compost.
Alternatively, perhaps if we can get a handle on why people leave dog poo unattended, we can unlock how to stop them. Mathias Gross is an environmental sociologist who has researched what is faced with dog walking in Germany. (yeah, someonedoctoral stool“Jokes already.) Gross divided these “defeat strategies” into “traditional” – not picking – and “responsible”, noting how the model citizen’s pompously swelled poo bags, and how the bags boomed. have become colorful and decorative. A cute phrase to avoid poop-scooping. “iPhones play an important role, because you can honestly talk into your phone and pretend nothing happened.”
Gross also tries to understand the mysterious phenomenon of “Shit Tree”, where the poo is picked up but then left on display. “I had the impression that this is the kind of revenge that people take,” he says. “To show their surroundings and society, look, I fooled you, I was a good citizen, but look here. If I were a dog owner, I might laugh at it: My dog, whom I admire and love so much, sees its prey hanging out somewhere. ,
More generally, that theory, wicked poo behavior can be about freedom, and our lack of it in civilized contemporary society. “Perhaps it is the freedom taken away from humans to defecate in nature that encourages them to project this freedom onto their best friends.” If the solution to dog poo is more human feces, it could be a problem where the cure is actually worse than the disease.