DOG FOULING
For quite a long time, dog fouling has been a big problem in the village with dog owners failing to pick up their dogs’ faeces. This is an extremely irresponsible act leading to a very dangerous health hazard as well as dog poo being transferred in the shoes of children and adults or the wheels of cycles or prams into school, parents’ cars or their own homes. There are sufficient dog bins around the village and notices advising that it is an offence to fail to clean up after your dog but if this ever had any effect, it certainly did not last for very long.
The first initiative was to place the below images in suitable places and ‘black spots’ around the village:
Once again, this worked for a time but slowly the bad habits of a minority of dog owners returned. It needed something different to educate and change attitudes.
The Society had a meeting with the Selby Dog Warden and suggested that he might be inclined to support a project involving local school children and he readily agreed. The Head Teacher at North Duffield Community Primary School was very much in favour and a presentation by members of the Society and the Dog Warden was arranged in front of the whole school. The idea was a competition to find the winning posters with the winning posters being displayed around the village. It was felt that involving the children would not only inform those children who lived in the same households, in all probability, as the lazy dog owners who were the offenders but would educate parents of the dangers of leaving dog faeces in the street and the serious danger to those children from their failure to pick it up.
The project was a huge success. Lots of excellent posters were created such that it was a very difficult task picking the winners. North Duffield Parish Council were on board from the very start and were involved in the selection process. They also, in due course, provided a station on the village green where free poo bags were supplied.
The winning posters
These posters were mounted on boards and displayed around the village. For a short while small ‘deposits’ were to be found from time to time and these were sprayed bright yellow with paint supplied by the Dog Warden. But, in the end the village was largely poo-