When Wildlife Meets Litter - Dog Poo

Now for a really stinky topic, here goes!

Dog poo really makes Jock sick! He can confirm there isn’t a poo fairy on Bennachie!

No one likes to see or smell dog poo lying around, and we all know it’s like a magnet for our shoes - yeuch! Not only do dog poo and poo bags look bad and spoil our enjoyment of walking on Bennachie, but it’s also much worse!

There’s nothing nicer than a walk in the countryside with our furry friends. They tend to do a ‘doo doo’ within the first few hundred yards of the car park. We can pick up some nasty diseases from dog poo and NHS Borders know all about it: Infections from Dogs & Cats: important information

It is an offence for someone responsible for a dog not to remove or correctly dispose of dog poo if the animal has fouled in any public open space to which the public has access to (Dog Fouling Scotland Act, 2003).

So we all know that dog owners have to BAG IT AND BIN IT!

Some humans seem to ‘get’ the first part of that message, carefully cleaning up their dog doo. But with the next bit, memory loss seems to kick in!

Some folks leave poo bags at the edge of the path - intending to collect it on the way back -but then accidentally (or on purpose) forget about it.

Worse! And Jock just doesn’t understand this - others hang it on trees! Why? Do they also intend collecting it on the way back, before the memory loss kicks in?

And others still deliberately leave poo bags, hiding them under bushes or tree roots - NOOOOO!

The poo inside the bag will decompose eventually, but the plastic bag won’t - it will be there for a very long time. Even biodegradable poo bags can take 3-6 months to decompose fully, and they can leave a sludge of toxic chemicals.

So dog walkers must finish the jobbie by binning their poo bags!

Jock Says: Never leave poo bags behind-finish the jobbie, bag it and bin it. If there’s no bin, take it home!

Hang on a minute, wildlife poops on Bennachie, so what’s all the fuss about?

The waste they leave behind is good for the environment- the animals have eaten what has been produced by the ecosystem and their poo is just returning resources back to the ecosystems.

Most dogs are fed on commercial dog food so their poo contains high quantities of nutrients which will eventually cause an imbalance in the ecosystem.