The tyranny of a dog's turds

However often you pick up your beloved pet's faeces, the hideousness of the task does not diminish

Robert Hanks
The Guardian

The Marine Conservation Society has reported a large increase in the volume of dog excrement found on British beaches wrapped in bags: for the UK as a whole, a rise of 11% in a single year, 2010 to 2011; for Scotland, the figure is 71%. From south of the border, devo max suddenly seems insufficient.
Most people's reaction to such a statistic is, I imagine, one of uncomplicated revulsion. For dog owners the thought of dog shit evokes a mixture of feelings: revulsion, naturally, but also shame, frustration, self-reproach – how did I allow myself to get into this situation? – and in the end, resignation.
For any dog owner, shit is a major issue, but even among ourselves the subject is hard to discuss. Hence the variety of language, euphemistic, infantilising or loftily medical – all the usual nonsense, plus a few dog-only ones: doggy-doo, business, mess ... This is the opposite of linguistic richness. In the park, we exchange discreet nods and unfinished sentences when an owner has not noticed their dog doing its duty – "Oh look, he's, umm ..." Then, with a display of gratitude, the owner rushes to the spot, pulls out a bag (the fancy bespoke article, lightly scented and biodegradable, or a ragged Tesco carrier), picks the stuff up, and drops it in the nearest bin.
The gratitude is real; though to non-owners it may sometimes seem that the world is drowning in turds, the imperative to pick up your dog's shit has been hammered into most dog owners. Good citizenship aside, to fail to locate your dog's excrement is a source of shame – you're making all of us look bad.
So it is that on winter evenings I find myself grubbing around in darkness, groping for a stray turd by the light of my mobile phone. Sometimes you give up on your own dog's droppings and take what you can find – there's usually something, and that way you've at least left the net level of faeces unchanged. In autumn, wet earth and piles of leaves turn the hunt into an agony; we bless the colder, drier weather which brings the tell-tale column of steam.
Alongside the gratitude to the helpful person who points out your dog's offences you might allow yourself a tiny touch of resentment: did you have to? Just once, couldn't we all pretend this never happened? For however often you pick up the shit, however much you love your dog, the hideousness of the task does not diminish. However deep the lesson of good citizenship has sunk, to walk down the street with a sack of faeces in your hand, looking for that elusive next bin, is a humiliation.
It is worth remembering how recent the whole poo-bag habit is – it is only in the last quarter-century or so that we've been picking it up and binning it. JR Ackerley's My Dog Tulip (1956), the frankest book ever written about the pleasures and pains of dog-owning. In the second chapter, "Liquids and Solids", he talks in detail about the agonies of doing your duty by your dog's bowels: finding appropriate places for them to be voided (he favoured the cemetery of Putney church – "The dead are less particular and more charitable than the living"), of circling railway stations for hours, praying that your dog will empty itself in time for you to catch a train, of your dog suddenly squatting in inappropriate places. And then he talks about walking away from the mess, leaving it on the pavement. It never crosses his mind that he could pick the stuff up. How? With what? Where would you put it? Part of me is appalled, part of me is envious: how lovely to own the dog but not its shit; how wonderful never again to feel that heavy warmth in your hand.
I join in the disgust at the bag dumpers who disfigure our beaches, but I feel compassion too. They have tried to do their bit, but at some point – why are we surprised? – shame and revulsion overcame altruism and willpower. Especially in Scotland.