As previously mentioned...we are on our holidays at our apartment in the Languedoc. The rain held off briefly this morning so we ventured out for a walk of a couple of miles to the beach and back. The local council have renewed a lot of the pavements here...with what appears to be a type of pink grit...very attractive, or at least it was, until.......the locals took their dogs for walkies.
I can no longer walk looking at the great scenery, enjoying the fresh air and the ozone...oh no....because every metre there was yet another pile of dog poop. On the way back having had to walk looking down at the pavement for fear of treading in the offending guano....I decided, having noticed all the effort (and expense) the council had gone to cutting hedges, planting new palm trees, it was time some of my hard earned taxes were spent clearing up the offending animal ordure. Thus I decided to photograph the little piles for a 50 metre stretch...and have 27 photo's...all will be emailed off to the Mairie tomorrow.
Once back at the flat I decided to check on line and see if there were other areas experiencing similar doggy outputs that were left for adults to step in and children no doubt on occasions to pick up...and came across these two articles. I am very much liking what the Spanish are doing to defeat the problem...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2336369/Spanish-town-fights-dog-poo-parcelling-POSTING-owner.html
and then this....
http://gg75.free.fr/crottes_de_chiens/
and yes.....the reason I am sitting here doing this is because its raining, again!
In St Cyprien...the Languedoc one...not the Dordogne....because its coastal I assume, they have signs everywhere and plastic bags provided on street lamps...and still they wont pick it up....I wonder what they would do if someone allowed their 3 year old to poo on the pavement...I dont see any difference frankly.
plus useful for the garden...!
Unfortunately the French just dont clear up after their dogs. I often get funny looks
in our village when I clear up with my little black plastic bag after my dog but it comes
naturally to me as back in the UK the majority of dog owners are very good. (Of course,
there are always some who won't clear up ... but on the whole most owners do.)
Where we used to live near Mincinhanpton in gloucestershire, the cows and ponies can walk into the town as far as the cattle grids!
Mind you it is much easier to spot and thus avoid!
Frankly I would volunteer to be the person with the rifle...though I kindly suggested a Taser....a little further on our walk we decided to detour....and walked along the waterways in St Cyp....where the boats are all tied up....we then saw piles of cr*p in the water....chucked out milk cartons...dry cleaning bags...empty coke cans...it was truly disgusting...the whole length of the waterway we walked about a mile had these areas of rubbish every few metres...what is wrong with these people...? more annoying when we returned to our apartment.. in a gated complex...where dogs are not permitted...I took pics of another dozen piles of dog poop scattered around....I shall be turning into Cruella Deville and catching all the dogs in a net and holding them up for ransom....the ransom being clean up the dog poop!
It's horrendous, Carol. In Paris they employ a load of guys on scooters with vacuum cleaners to slurp it up. I think they should just employ one guy with a rifle....to shoot the owners, not the dogs! Stella, my wife, went into the tourist office in Marseilles and also commented on it, and on live radio on a show being broadcast from a square.They were both shrugged off in a "tough s@/t" manner. The law's jumped on smokers, which I applaud, so why not bad dog owners?