I’ve just seen the film Marley and Me. I’ve still got slightly wet hair, as I cried so much. Very confusing marketing….but that’s beside the point. I do want to talk about dogs though, and as has been pointed out recently, it’s been a while since we had a Sonny the Black Menace themed post. Believe me, just like the writer of Marley and Me did in his weekly newspaper column, I could do a Sonny post every time. This post is on behalf of me and Sonny, two innocent bystanders in the evil world of dog poo.

Last night I had a conversation with a friend about the dog poo situation in my village, which I will name and shame- it’s Newmachar, Aberdeenshire. Hang your sorry head in shame, Newmachar! The streets are pebble-dashed with an enormous amount of dog poo. Really, it is quite spectacular. It would look like the entire village had gone back in time to the Seventies if it weren’t for the fact that the dog poo isn’t white….and there’s no “park porn” rustling in the bushes beside it.

I’ve just come back from taking Sonny for his afternoon walk/lark about, and in our 20 minute fun-filled walk in the biting North East cold, I counted 23 pieces of poo lying on verge, green, pavement and road. 23!!! Twenty-three!!!?

What makes the entire situation worse is that the singularly worst location for dog merde is the school road. It is as if someone is strategically placing them right outside the school gates as an elaborate sick joke against kids and the mothers who have to scrape the offence out of the tiny treads in school shoes. (Top tip, someone invent an implement for this very purpose- you’ll make a fortune).

A couple of things are clear to me:

• This is not the work of just one dog owner (notice I said “dog owner” and not “dog”)
• Since a great deal of it was on my street, people may assume that it is the work of me and the Black Menace. This upsets me as not one of Sonny’s little parcels have even been left to even go cold before being scooped into a bag and disposed of. Not once. And I’m a Girl Guide, so I don’t lie. But I feel the stares of non-dog owners as they tar us all with the same accusatory brush. Sonny may be called The Black Menace but, really, his crimes only extend to the culling of the kids’ toys* and the occasional bout of escapology.
  
  

So, what to do about it? My friend contacted the local council Dogshit Warden, they have a proper title like Dog Colonic Wastage Technician, but who are we kidding, Dogshit Warden is what they are. Nothing was done anyway, so quite what their duties are is unclear. They said they would “look into it”. Wow, what a strategy!

Since her abortive attempts at “going the official route” my friend has been keeping vigil in her kids bedroom, watching over the park space at night after a morning when she counted seven overnight deposits on her way to the school gates. She’s not quite sat on the Grassy Knoll with a rifle, but that’s only because she doesn’t want to roll in anything unsavoury on the aforementioned Knoll. She has yet to catch anyone. Now either we’ve got dingoes or someone is lobbing Fido’s offerings with a tennis racket over their back garden fence into the public arena.

Quite what my pal is going to do when she catches the perpetrator is unclear, but let’s just say she’s fairly handy and I don’t fancy their chances when she does.

The problem is that short of catching every offender and fining them, what can be done to stop this behaviour? Now, I’ve said before that I would gladly accept the responsibility of full police powers (and any accompanying anti-personnel devices on offer), and so would my friend, but no one seems to be taking this on board.

So what can be done? Do you have an answer (comical, useful, sadistic or otherwise)?

*You would know if it was Sonny’s poo, it would have a Polly Pocket limb or head in it, or a piece of Star Wars Lego.