Taking the lead on dogs and their doings

LIFE, AND OTHER BITS: THERE are places where you can train your dog to walk sedately by your side instead of dragging you into the traffic.

There are places you can take it to learn how to jump through hoops and run along twisting tunnels and not to bite people (well, the people you like anyway).

But what no one has devised yet is a way of training dogs to deposit their steaming calling cards into a bag (biodegradable of course) and put it in the nearest dog-dirt bin.
Until such time as doggy potty training is on, as it were, the curriculum (sorry) the good folk of Shaw are going on the warpath employing plain clothes patrols (more fun if they were dressed up as great danes or snarling rotweillers) to follow the depositing dogs to their homes and then, no doubt after presenting the evidence on a shovel or an extra-thick Kleenex, fining owners for allowing his or her hound to despoil the streets of Shaw.

Council leader Howard Sykes, a dog owner himself, adopts a snapping terrier mode on the subject of dogs and their doings.

“We should take no prisoners . . . Let’s do some people and name and shame them,” he growled showing that when it comes to dog poo he’s certainly no-one’s poodle.

The dog-do patrols will not only follow dogs back to their homes (how many owners will pretend the mutt is not theirs I wonder?) but will be out at dawn and after dark watching out for owners who look the other way while old Fido does his thing and then slap them with an on-the-spot (or maybe that should be on the pile) fine.

Hopefully that will apply too to those bizarre owners who do parcel up their dog’s delights and then either leave the bagged offering in the field, on the pavement or towpath or attach it to the branch of a handy tree.

Now that really is odd behaviour.


ON a similar theme, perfect for a Friday teatime, how stressed do you get when you can’t break into that new, pristine white toilet roll?

Well, stress out no longer.

Scientists with nothing better to do (they should be out potty training dogs) have invented a loo roll with what they call “easy- roll technology” and it has only cost them £3 million.

We have Asda to thank for getting to the bottom of this stress-inducing problem by using what they say is a staggered amount of glue.

Ah, the wonders of science and technology. What ever happened to San Izal?


FINAL WORD: The great revelation of the week was that women have much better memories than men. We men already know that — it is to blame for the entirely unfair dredging up of so many of our alleged shortcomings and misdemeanours of the dim and distant past.