August 26 is World Dog Day, established in 2004 by the US activist Colleen Paige and since then an opportunity to celebrate what we often call “our best friends”. We could celebrate it in many ways, but we decided for this time to leave the compliments aside and focus on something useful: explain to you why it is so important to collect his poop, one of the most unpleasant tasks that they touch those who bring a dog for a walk.
Yet even one of the most essential, for a long list of reasons that we now go to illustrate – hoping to convince you to always pull on the feces of your four -legged friend, even when there is no one who sees you.
A casket of bacteria. The health reasons behind the need to always collect dog poop are easy to imagine. A 1995 study showed that in a single gram of canine feces there are 23 million bacteria, including the indepel Escherichia coli And Salmonella, in addition to other parasites such as Giardia and various nematod worms.
A study from 2021, among other things, advanced the hypothesis that the antibiotics that we give to dogs to counter these parasites can end up in the ground passing through the stool, “helping” the local parasite fauna to develop resistance to these substances.
I was traveling. The parasites of the dog of the dog not only affect humans (and other dogs). As demonstrated by this 2003 study, there is at least one canine parasite which, if it goes to sheep, deer and cows, can cause spontaneous abortions in the females of these animals.
Consider then that the poop does not remain there where it is deposited, but rain and wind can make it “travel” up to the closest waterways: in the United States there have been cases of closed beaches because it polluted by canine feces. Finally, the dog’s poop is rich in phosphorus and nitrogen, which in normal quantities are excellent fertilizers, but beyond a certain limit they can trigger catastrophic events such as an explosion of algae that damages the entire aquatic ecosystem.
Butterfly effect. The dog’s poop also has other less evident effects at first sight, but equally devastating. Some examples? Wild carnivores tend to avoid the “marked” areas from the excrement of a dog, thus reducing their range. The animals that live in areas where dogs are circulating freely, however, are more fragile and subject to diseases.
The poop then helps the growth of some plants, which grow dramatically and block access to sunlight to other plants: in general, where there is the dog’s poop, biodiversity tends to reduce itself. Also because domestic dogs have a diet richer in protein than wild animals, and their poop is therefore “unbalanced” and full of extra nutrients.
Many solutions. So how to do it? Very easy: always collect your dog’s poop! Of course, in this way you will contribute to increasing plastic pollution a little: according to a 2020 study, a dog consumes, over his life, about 10,000 bags for poop. There is also a solution for this, however: instead of throwing the dog’s poop into the garbage, collect it and throw it in the toilet, treating it as you would do with yours. Or use it to make compost, if you have a vegetable garden or garden. In short: watch out for poop, because it is more dangerous than it looks like. And enjoy World Dog Day! Always with a ready bag, of course.
