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Hi Doug & All, Apr 18, 2011
This depends largely on intensity of use and the temperament of the dog.
And it raises matters that extend far beyond dogs & walks.
The full context involving dogs & walks is a continuum that spans the
extremes of hunting rabbits with a rabbit hound [snowshoe hares with a
snowshoe hare-hound for those who insist], where by convention neither are
on a leash, to walking along a paved sidewalk or path through a residential
area where only very well-behaved dogs near home can reasonably be unleashed
and where one (unfortunately) should go prepared to collect doggie-do.
I am biased because we were owned by a lab/rabbit hound for nearly 20
years and he lived to run in the woods; at least two 1-hr runs daily in all
weather plus a bedtime walk in evening with, on average, about 20 hours of
running per week [until the last several years]. He always had a cow bell on
when running so his approach was obvious long before he came into view. And
we were fortunate in that he lived before the craze of collecting doggie-do
caught on.
When I first walked to Cape Split there was no trail; just a grown-in
sled road that ended in the sawdust & slab heap of a long-gone sawmill with
a branch road, going up slope NE, that petered out in an old chopping. When
I was last there, about 25 years ago, there was much traffic on the eroded
trail but I would not have dreamed of carrying dog droppings out of these
woods. And I can not imagine why one would do so now.
It is a good fertilizer and a good food resource for creatures so
adapted. To carry a biological resource out of woodland and then dump it
into a 'land-fill' is, in my view, a triple abomination.
It robs woodland of a useful resource, burdens an expensive and
unsustainable 'waste' disposal system and creates problems for future
generations by filling 'leak-proof' landfills with decomposable organic
materials below the zone of aerobic biological activity where they can not
decompose and become part of .the nutrient cycle.
Life depends upon closed nutrient cycles. Western so-called civilization
seems determined to generate one-way flow of nutrients; soil to landfill or
soil to sea.
Getting back to dogs & walks. During high traffic periods one should
probably not let a dog run on the Cape Split trail and at all times this
trail has potential hazards for dogs that are over-adventurous; getting
where they can't go up, down or sideways.
I don't see why well-mannered dogs shouldn't run in e.g. Palmeter woods
or up the Gaspereau River trail.
Having spent considerable time in the woods, walking, hunting, fishing,
camping and working: I can not envision any situation in which I would carry
out second-hand food or second-hand water.
Yt, Dave Webster, Kentville
----- Original Message -----
From: "Doug Linzey" <doug@fundymud.com>
To: "NatureNS" <naturens@chebucto.ns.ca>
Sent: Monday, April 18, 2011 3:37 PM
Subject: [NatureNS] Dogs on walks
> I'm looking for a bit of a straw poll:
>
> What do you think of taking dogs on walks such as the Cape Split Trail?
>
> Thanks,
> Doug Linzey
>
>
> -----
> No virus found in this message.
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