Dog Poo Composter

[tameblackbirds]

When I first had my dog as soon as I started walking him he was pulled into gutter as soon as he need the urge picking up not a problem and no mess ever on path he now automatically steps into gutter as he gets the urge oh and the forestry commission on one of our last walks urged you to flick with a stick rather than pick as the number of people leaving beyond foul bags was beyond a joke as we only know to well. I refer to other posts regarding dog mess !

[Jim Ford]

Originally Posted by Garden Carpet

If you dont like dogs.. fair enough... you are missing out on something wonderful but dont make them out to be polluting parasites!

Unless they're wormed regularly they do pollute _with_ parasites!

I remember reading some years ago that most adults by the time they die, show signs of having been infected with toxacara canis at some time in their lives. There was a radio programme many years ago about a girl whose childhood was blighted by an undiagnosed toxacara infection. She missed a great deal of her childhood with illness and had several operations to remove growths which were though to be cancerous.

Jim

[Cotham Marble]

Originally Posted by Cotham Marble

Personally I'd regard any non working domestic animal as a pollution source and would avoid it's acquisition in the first place.

Originally Posted by Gelert

Well my dogs are working dogs so don't fall into your category do they?

It’s not so much ‘my’ category, as an attempt to accurately identify the nature of the problem for which a solution is being sought. Just because a domestic animal is a living thing does not mean that it is reasonable to give it an equivalence of an entity separate from the owner. The pollution caused by a pet is pollution caused by the owner, and the best resolution of any pollution problem is where ever possible the removal of the source. My choice in the case of animal ownership is to go for zero emission and it is that solution that I would recommend to anyone else.

The management of domestic animal faeces is a major health issue, both Toxocara canis and Toxocara catis are sources of toxocariasis, and although rare in the UK it can cause very serious illness, likewise toxoplasmosis, an infection largely related to cats. Other infections from pet faeces include E.coli and salmonella, again illnesses that can have serious repercussions. Despite pets being a vector of serious illness, compared to the approach towards Rats as a vector for leptospirosis, there seems an unquestioned acceptance that pet borne disease is an accepted risk we should all take without question. I don’t accept that position – so I’m putting the question up for debate.

Home digesters and composters may be a more responsible approach to managing pet faeces, however increased use of these systems will see increased ‘failures’. Certainly if the level of failure of garden and kitchen waste composting (flies, rats, stench) as evidenced by innumerable disused plastic ‘daleks’, is anything to go by, misused faecal digesters and composters will become a significant public health issue.

None of us want to give up our cherished but polluting ownerships and activities – whether it’s foreign holidays, gas guzzling vehicles, food consuming and faecal producing pets, or even green gardening purchasing of plants – but just because it’s cherished, the activity, what ever it is, can’t be immune from serious analysis of its environmental harm.

CM

[Jim Ford]

Originally Posted by Cotham Marble

The management of domestic animal faeces is a major health issue, both Toxocara canis and Toxocara catis are sources of toxocariasis, and although rare in the UK it can cause very serious illness, likewise toxoplasmosis, an infection largely related to cats. Other infections from pet faeces include E.coli and salmonella, again illnesses that can have serious repercussions. Despite pets being a vector of serious illness, compared to the approach towards Rats as a vector for leptospirosis, there seems an unquestioned acceptance that pet borne disease is an accepted risk we should all take without question. I don’t accept that position – so I’m putting the question up for debate.

No debate as far as I'm concerned. It should be compulsory for pet owners to have their animals regularly wormed or otherwise freed from diseases transmissable to humans. Maybe a way to do this is to bring in annually renewable licenses for the animals, only issued on production of a current vets certificate. Mind you, we're back to the issue with many laws introduced these days - what's the point of introducing a law if there's nobody going to enforce it!

Jim

[Kayleigh]

Originally Posted by Jim Ford

No debate as far as I'm concerned. It should be compulsory for pet owners to have their animals regularly wormed or otherwise freed from diseases transmissable to humans. Maybe a way to do this is to bring in annually renewable licenses for the animals, only issued on production of a current vets certificate. Mind you, we're back to the issue with many laws introduced these days - what's the point of introducing a law if there's nobody going to enforce it!

Jim

This also should apply to cat owners too...

When I owned my horse there was rules on the yard..
All the horses had to be wormed at the same time to stop them being reinfected..

[Monkey Orchid]

Worming might help reduce Toxocara parasite loads in domestic pets, but of course the use of veterinary drugs to kill parasites does have a serious knock-on effect on wildlife via the food web. E.g. Ivermectin, a commonly-used worming treatment for domestic grazing animals such as cattle and horses, persists in the animals' dung, where it then kills dung-feeding insects such as Dor beetles. This in turn seriously affects the Greater horseshoe bat, for which Dor beetles are an important prey item. It's a demonstration of an important ecological principle, essentially "What goes around, comes around."

There will always be feral dogs and cats transmitting Toxocara, not to mention wild species such as foxes which also carry the parasite. Research has shown that there are high levels of contamination of soil with Toxocara eggs anyway: 87% of soils tested in Germany, 66% in the UK, 42% in Japan. Cats are considered by some authorities to be less responsible for transmitting Toxocara to humans than dogs, partly because of cats' habit of burying their faeces, and partly because dogs are usually in more direct contact with humans. One of the most effective countermeasures against potential ingestion and infection by Toxocara is one of the simplest: thoroughly washing hands after outdoor activities such as gardening, playing etc. If pet owners were to pick up/clear away their dog or cat faeces and dispose of it properly via a contained composter/wormery system then that should reduce the pathological load of eggs in the soil in general, too.

I used to have a dog and I loved him; I own an elderly cat and I love him too... But I try to be realistic about his impact on wildlife and the environment. I guess it's all about balance. We have to accept that every decision we make about the pets we own, the food we eat, our lifestyles etc has an effect on the wider environment, and the ideal is to live as 'lightly' as possible in terms of our impact on that environment... Whether that be from carbon footprint, use of resources or conserving biodiversity. It's impossible for humans to live without affecting the countless other lifeforms around us, but we can be honest with ourselves about it and hopefully seek to reduce our impact as far as possible.

Toxocara worms are part of the environment just as much as butterflies and bees. But of course they're parasites and have the potential to cause us harm, so our response is to try to eradicate them, much as we do with the Plasmodium parasites which cause malaria. There is evidence that some parasites actually benefit human health - parasites are partially responsible for turning certain proteins in our immune system into the inflammatory cell destroyers they are now. Without them, humans would probably be vulnerable to a larger number of pathogens and suffer from a greater number of allergies (an idea known as the hygiene hypothesis). That said, infection with Toxocara is a potentially serious condition which (as is well-known) can result in blindness; although most people who contract it suffer minor or unnoticeable symptoms.

I can see that this topic is a potentially divisive one, especially given the average Brit's penchant for being a pet-lover, but I would agree with Cotham Marble's contention that any and all of our 'cherished activities and ownerships' shouldn't be immune from an analysis of the environmental impact that they have. We should be able to at least discuss these issues here without people getting upset, hopefully.

[Gelert]

Monkey Orchid - thanks for your measured response, I do appreciate that these things need to be open for discussion.
I have to say though that there are two or three things which stop me from engaing more actively in environmental issues, one of which is my experience that there is a group of people poised to feel self righteous at the first opportunity. I don't fly anywhere and haven't for many years, I source my food fairly carefully, I mend and make do and recycle, my fuel bills are small. But, as you say, M O - we WILL make an impact, I don't actually see why we SHOULDN'T make some kind of impact - we're a part of the ecosystem too, and many of us do our best to live reasonably well.
This thread started as a discussion about how to dispose of dog s*** in a responsible way. It depresses and alienates me when people take it as an opportunity to lecture me about the impact my dogs may have on the environment, to rant about dog owners in general or to make smug comments (none of this is aimed at you M O).
Surely part of the task for environmentalism is to get as many people on board as possible. Some of the responses to this thread exemplify why environmentalists might sometimes fail to engage the rest of us.

[Monkey Orchid]

Originally Posted by Gelert

Monkey Orchid - thanks for your measured response, I do appreciate that these things need to be open for discussion.

Surely part of the task for environmentalism is to get as many people on board as possible.

With you on that one, Gelert. My attitude when talking to people about environmental and ecological issues is "Start from where people are at, not from where you want them to be" - i.e. try to find some common ground if at all possible, and work from there. I was involved in a lot of direct action protests for many years (roadbuilding etc) and I was struck by how messianic and evangelical some of the people who called themselves environmentalists were. Even I found them offputting, so I'm sure the wider public did as well. Nothing makes me less likely to listen to a discussion than someone who's convinced they're right and I am wrong!

[Maiden]

I use Bio-gradable "poo" bags.
If my dog has a "poo" in the garden I bury it in the corner ,and our Giant slugs actually eat it! Afew days later and the "poo" is gone.

I don`t use chemicals in the garden.
It infuriates me to see "poo" bags hanging from trees.

[nightshade]

I made a dog loo out of 4"x about 18" soil pipe set flush with a few inches of gravel and sand in the bottom. I primed it with a piece of liver to start the bio action and to my surprise it worked. The dog was duly trained to dump in the hole and the faeces diappeared in due course. It was not actually the bio action I had expected there were in fact dozens of very large slugs at work down there but the end result was very acceptable. I had a friend with two Boxers and these used a hole (4") in the garden manhole cover which of course went straight into the sewerage system