For those of us who have grown up with dogs as pets, one of those fun passtimes has aways been having your dog fetch sticks. But now there seems to be a new activity for those dog owners that seem to be more "yobishly challanged." It is encouraging your dog to gnaw at young trees with the intent of destroying them. Yes, I do not lie.
We have now had a number of reports of someone allowing their dog to attack some of the trees planted on Railway Street with the effect of destroying them. When this problem was raised with the folks from Greenspace, they had this to say:
The kind of dog damage you describe is unfortunately becoming more and more common, though not quite as blatant as Railway Street. It seems to be one of the more recent trends to have a Staffordshire type terrier and train them (to what end???) by getting them to chew on trees. Obviously, the implication must be that if you own a "hard" dog, then you yourself are "hard". Perhaps it’s a sign of my old age, but I find such behaviour risible and very, very frustrating.
At first thought, my simple solution to the problem would be to coat the base of the trees with RAT POISON, but on second thought, that would simply punish the dog and the dog is not the problem (but then how could we apply the Rat Poison to the owner). So short of having a vigilante committee to "sort" these people out and "re-educate" them, I’m now stumped. What do you think we should do. Please post your comments here. We can send the good ones to Boris for immediate action.
Kings Cross Environment 