Canine Capers Returns!

Speaking of Poop and the Straight Scoop

 — by Lesley Liddle —

While Lulu, Leonard and I meandered through Buck Park and up to the high school yesterday, I picked up ten dog turds along the pathway. This was discouraging because I quickly filled my only poop bag and had to go back to the car and scrounge around under seats and dog gear to find a larger plastic bag to use for so many turds. The poops were mostly alongside the path near the tennis courts. Some were not fresh. The offending dogs are obviously with companions who begin walking from that parking lot off of Mt. Baker Rd. I love to walk through that park with my “guys” and I will really be sad if the park becomes off limit to our dogs.

Come on Dog People! Buck Park is not a toilet! It is wonderful to have such a place in which to stretch, walk, run, sniff, visit and play. Not everyone can comfortably take their dogs to the Dog Park and Buck Park gives people a place to walk alongside their dog.

There are several fields where all kinds of sports happen, children play and families sit on the grass and watch. I enjoy training and socializing my classes of dogs there. So please don’t treat this wonderful park as primarily a free toilet for your dog!

Of course any dog is excited to arrive at this glorious place of recreation, and, if you are a dog, the natural impulse is to relieve yourself, especially if you’ve been cooped up for hours. So pay particular attention at the beginning of park walks with your dog because that is when the urge to poop generally hits. It is pleasant to walk and chat with a human friend while your dog is frolicking.

Unfortunately too often I see people in lively conversation, paying no attention to their dog(s) and not even noticing that their dog has just made a giant deposit on the park grass. Here is a fact: You absolutely must pick up after your pet, and not just out of courtesy or for aesthetic reasons.

There are a number of serious zoonotic diseases that may be carried in the fecal material (i.e. poop) of dogs. Zoonotic means the disease can be passed from animals to humans. Hook worm is an example. Other zoonotic diseases from fecal waste are cyptosporidosis, giardia, salmonellosis, and roundworm. Please understand that dogs are carnivores and therefore their poop is much the same as our human poop. So when you leave your dog’s turd lying on a public path or in your own back yard it is much like you are leaving your own poop there  — same ingredients, same sanitation problem.

But honestly, the dogs themselves are not the problem. People need to be educated, young and old. That is what needs to happen so listen up and Scoop the Poop. Last summer between the forest and the back of the skateboard arena I found wads of dirty toilet paper, human poop and trash scattered about, humans potentially infecting not just themselves but dogs and wildlife. We are the culprits. So let’s just forgive ourselves and decide to take better care of our precious park.