Pet owners should hopefully understand how important picking up after their floofs is, but vets have had to issue a gross warning to those who are improperly disposing of the poo.
Ah, don’t get me started on the ways people are mucking up picking up poo.
It’s pretty simple, but apparently there are those living among us who need a reminder. When it comes to disposing of pet poop, typically, the dog poops and you pick it up with a poo bag and then throw it in a poo bin. At home, you’d do it all the same, except throw the bag in the brown bin (black bin if you’ve only got that).
For cats, you pick it up out of the tray using a little scoop, and put it in a poo bag and again, into the bin.
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Sounds simple, right? WRONG.
Usually, people would make use of the designated bins in their park for depositing their dog's crap.
But sometimes people make use of that handy thing we call the toilet.
If it's good enough for human poop, why not that of our cat and dog, right? Wrong. Over on PetImpact, experts urged people not to flush dog poop down the toilet.
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They said: "Dog poo is considerably different to human poo. It contains twice the amount of harmful bacteria and also contains unique parasites.
"One particular parasite, Toxocara, is highly resistant to high temperatures.
"Our water treatment facilities are not designed to deal with dog poo pathogens such as this so there's a chance that they will pass through and contaminate our waterways if flushed down the toilet.
"Toxocara can also infect humans, causing blindness in children and infect animals so presents a public health risk. This is why many waste water treatment plants advise against flushing any type of pet poo down the toilet, due to the extra pathogens it contains."
Crikey, that escalated quickly.
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The website further cautioned: "Dog and cat poo can also contain medicines, such as parasite treatments, which can be highly toxic to aquatic life and may threaten the stability of entire ecosystems.
"Medicines are much trickier to clean from sewage and will likely pass unchanged into our waterways."
So there you have it, stick to the bins.
They weren't the only ones sounding the alarm, though. Over on TikTok, a vet was issuing the same warning about toxocara. He gave further warning about a disease called Toxoplasmosis, which can be caused through human contact with animal faeces.
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He said: "It means we don’t develop the adult worms in our intestines - but what happens is that we accidentally swallow the eggs (in poo particles) which hatch into larvae and these move around inside our bodies."
Lovely stuff.
So there you have it folks, stop giving your pets access to the lavatory. Let them have their litter boxes and gardens like God intended.
Topics: Community, Health, Environment
Britt Jones