I'm sure you, like me, have horrific memories of returning home after a walk and thinking, 'What's that smell?' As if you didn't know. Yes, you've put your foot in it again and have the prospect ahead of a stomach-churning session with an old cloth and some powerful disinfectant.
However, many dog owners, with the threat of a fine hanging over them, have come to see the error of their ways, and can be seen busily preoccupied at the roadside, delicately manipulating steaming heaps into plastic bags. Our soles are now saved.
Dogs were one problem but now I get maddened by a much bigger one. Horses. Am I the only person who is demented by dung? Long smouldering trails of the stuff.
Some ten years ago I moved away from the city and settled in a village in East Lothian. At first I found the gentle clip-clopping of passing horses and ponies soothing. As a boy, back in the 1950s, I used to like to help the milkman because I got a ride on his horse-drawn cart. It was then that I noticed the horse liked to empty his bowels at the same places every day. The horses which nowadays amble past my house have unfortunately-similar toilet habits and I'm frequently greeted by a barrier of dung across the end of the drive. I don't like the smell and if the stuff gets onto the car tyres then the garage stinks. If someone visits the house they invariably wade through the stuff before walking on the carpets.
What can be done? When I was boy I was intrigued by an elderly man who used to shovel up the
milk-horse dung and spread it round his roses. We called him 'the jobby man'. This was all terribly green but it was rather difficult to smell the actual flowers. And, frankly, I just don't fancy spending part of my day scooping dung into a pail.
Is it too much to ask that the riders get down from their steeds and, with the aid of a light plastic shovel and a refuse sack, gather up the mess and transport it back to the stables?
If the riders prefer to ignore the problem and ride off sedately into the sunset then they should be pursued and fined. We have mounted police who could carry out this duty. But, of course, they have horses, and...
Oh, well. It was just an idea.
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We could create a hierarchy of offensiveness here.
ReplyDeleteI find the dog stuff worse than the horse stuff. Dog dirt is stickier and smellier. Bullshit from politicians not so bad on the feet but goes for my head quite a bit.
Paths leading to the beaches in the John Muir Country Park are absolutely impregnated with dog dirt. Yukk!!
It's a favourite dog walking area.
Some owners clear up, others, who deserve to go to one of the inner circles of hell,don't.