We dog-owners and dog-walkers have got to learn to scoop that pet poop

Very few civic issues get sorted out in this city by one set of people recognizing that their behaviour is annoying to another set of people. No way. We are not a self-regulating society, and with law enforcement being what it is, citizens have to often take recourse to slugging-it-out amongst each other or simply putting up with nuisances of every nuanced kind.

We are surely headed for just such a slug-fest on the pet-dog-poo vs pedestrians issue. In keeping with the Indian trait of ‘no dirt in and around my house, but its fine to foul up elsewhere), most dog owners walk their animals some distance away from their home. (The mutts, I mean the dogs, themselves don’t like discharging their daily dump near the house, too.) Since most dog-owners (not me, godpromise) don’t care, once their laadla/laadli has relieved itself, and scurry away home in relief, most morning walkers in this city are greeted with steaming lumps, right on their walkways, pathways, and the pavement too.

In some areas, where there is ‘kaccha’ soil and sand and grass beyond the verge of the road, surely Moti can be encouraged to go there, and if he doesn’t, surely we can scoop it up and throw it in the bushes, where it will at least biodegrade in a few days. We don’t need fancy pooper-scoopers and whatnot, just take some pieces of newspaper with you on your dogwalk, for god’s sake, and shift the sh**, can’t you? There is something really quite sick and tremendously arrogant and people-hating, to leave the mess in people’s way, or besides their parked car door, so that they step right into it. I mean come on. One fed up citizen has been saying that he and his wife are going to collect their child’s poo and go leaving it outside the gates of all dog-owning families in their neighbourhood. Now is this what people have to descend to? A faeces-fight-fest of this kind?

There are ‘too many other much more pressing things for the authorities to do’ is the usual answer trotted out when people ask that this be made an offence, and people be fined for it. Of course there are. The list is endless, and so that means we just continue to live with this menace till ‘the authorities’ have the time and the wherewhital to come after us?

Only some neighbourhoods or streets of Pune have managed to stop this casual leaving behind of your pet’s present to the pedestrian, and have got people to agree to scoop the poop. This has come from the pedestrians as well as the road-cleaners saying enough is enough; but more importantly, the initiative has come from a few civic-minded dog owners themselves. These are the people who are not the kind who will instantly cover up by saying ‘oh what about all the plastic trash?’ or some such pointing elsewhere kind of infantile response when people have objected to the doggy-do on the roads. They have had the grace and gumption to say yes, we are creating a nuisance, yes it can’t be left in the path of pedestrians to hop skip jump over, and yes we are going to do something about it. And instead of the neighbourhood being divided between people who don’t care what their dog leaves behind, and people who have to hide in the bushes and leap out and shout at dog-walkers, there is, wonder-of-wonders, a sense of self-regulation, that these localities have exhibited.

Signs are displayed prominently, and dog owners themselves have put them up. They have also managed to get paid dog walkers to adhere to this simple act of decency, so ‘my dog walker won’t do it’ can no more be an excuse from any dog owner.

Just like we were taught to pull the flush before leaving the loo, as kids, it’s time to learn to move that canine-crap out of the way too.

Gouri Dange

Pune Mirror