Responsible and Respectful Pet Ownership

As a dog owner you have certain responsibilities.  Being a pet owner there are things that need to be done to ensure your furbaby´s happiness and good health.  

However, have you thought of the happiness of the people around you when it comes to your pooch?  Chances are you haven´t, if you leave your dog´s poop lying in the middle of the street or in your neighbour´s flowerbed, or go to work locking doggie in your house or on your patio where it barks in frustration all day because it cannot spend time with the person it adores.

I have never been able to understand the mentality of these people.  Have their parents never taught them to respect others?  To me, this kind of behaviour is the ultimate in disrespect and inconsideration towards “thy neighbour“.  We are all living together in this street, this town, this country, on this planet, but as time goes on I have found that nobody respects anybody anymore these days. 

I accosted a woman in the street a while ago and told her in the most friendly but firm manner possible, after she let her dog poop on the side of the pavement and started to walk away, “please, would you do me a favour and clean that up?”.  I got into a short conversation with her suggesting that it was a simple thing to take a plastic bag with her and scoop up the poop and put it in a nearby bin, after which she basically stated “nobody else does it, so why should I?”.  Not really knowing what else to say to that, I replied “well, you really are a fine example for your children”, before I walked away in suppressed anger.  

I am starting to feel like some kind of “freak” these days complaining about dog turds in the alley where I live and dogs barking all day long.  There seem to be only a handful of people who feel the same way about this, but most just ignore it because they are guilty of these crimes themselves.  

Oh yes, by the way, it is a crime to have your dog foul the street!  Even here in sunny, paradisical Lanzarote.  It is by law a punishable offence with fines and even prison.  Unfortunately, “minor laws” like this are just not enforced at all.  I wish that more tourists would visit the residential back streets of Puerto del Carmen and witness this horrible mess, and wonder how quickly the Ayuntamiento (Council) would act and make enforcing this law much more strict once complaints from tourists start coming?

The noise pollution from barking dogs is another thing.  Back in the UK most people would keep their dogs inside because of the constantly bad weather, whereas in Lanzarote the weather is always nice and most dogs are outside on patios, in gardens or even on small balconies. I have made numerous phone calls to the police about dogs barking during the night, and even though there´s not much they can do about dogs barking in the daytime hours, it is most annoying having to listen to this noise for most of the day, every day. Decibel-wise, I am sure it is much worse than loud music – but the “on and off” nature of it is, of course, hard to complain about. 

Apart from the noise, I am of course concerned for the animals´ welfare.  Getting a puppy and then going to work for 8 or 9 hours five or six days a week, is cruelty and neglect, in my view.  If they did their research before  getting a dog they would know that dogs are pack animals and need a leader or master, that they are extremely social animals, and that they should not be left alone for any length of time.  They then find that poochie starts peeing around the house and destroying things while they´re out, followed by poochie ending up outside when they go to work, and poochie becomes even more unhappy so it starts barking and howling in sadness and frustration and the whole neighbourhood has to listen to it too. End of story. 

Or is it? Not for the poor dog, nor the people who are “forced” to listen, unfortunately. Feeling lonely, cast out (of the house) and bored all day with no human (or other animal) company is something that NO animal should feel, and especially not a dog. There is not much I can do though, because as long as it has shade and water, it is all perfectly legal. Regarding the barking, it seems that once you have succeeded with one dog and its owner, a new one moves into the neighbourhood and it all starts afresh. 

So for now, I guess I have to put up with stepping around dog poop on a daily basis and listening to sad pooches complaining noisily. 

Lanzarote may seem like paradise when you´re on holiday here, but some of its reality is not so pleasant….