Duncan
Hello we are from Sciennes School and we want to talk about the dangers of dog fouling and the problems that we having with it.
Our playground at School is too small for the majority of the 600 children to play in safely. As a result two triangles of the Meadows has been designated a play area for P6and P7 children. (Show the overhead and slide). You can see these areas shades on the overhead here... and also on this slide here... we are allowed to play in between these paths here... But there is a problem (show the slide) there is dog foul everywhere. We went down to our area a few weeks ago and we found 127 piles of poo. That's terrible.
Katie
Dog fouling is wrong because it can spread disease and it is illegal (see the council byelaws). You are supposed to be fined up to £200 for letting your dog foul in certain public places, but we have never seen or heard of anyone getting fined. Many people let their dogs foul in the Meadows but it seems that no one gets fined. Dog fouling affects many people, not just us. It affects footballers, sunbathers, walkers, tourists and in particular children. But alarmingly dog fouling can cause a nasty disease called Toxicariasis.
Yvonne
Toxicariasis is a terrible disease that can cause blindness and what's more it is normally children that get it. Not all dogs carry the larvae. It starts when the dog fouls. Children come along and play in that area and one child may fall over. The larvae from the dog foul gets on the to the childs' hand and if the child eats without washing their hands, eggs will be swallowed. The eggs will hatch into small bugs and then the bugs will look around the body for soft tissue. It may find the tissue in the eye and it will damage the eye. This damage can cause blindness. Did you know 100 people in Britain go blind each year from Toxicariasis?
Victoria
Our class is very annoyed about dog fouling and we want your help to try and stop it happening in the Meadows. This is what we have done to try to educate the public and to prevent it happening. We all drew posters about the problem and asked our local shopkeepers to put them in their windows. We have written about the problem in our school newsletter as well as letting the world know about the problem on our school web site. We produced leaflets and educational pamphlets and we handed them out to people on the Meadows. We also gave some of your free pooper scoopers to dog owners in the Meadows.
Our class also designed a questionnare to ask people about the problem and to find out what they thought should be done.
Ian
Shows the overheads about the questionnare.
Jenny
Now we would like to tell you about what we would like you to do to help us get our play area cleaner. Obviously we would like to see all of the Meadows poop free but we are particularly concerned about our area. We really want more bins. There is only one dog waste bin in the Meadows and that is broken. We are even willing to buy some ourselves and to help pay for their emptying. Someone from the council wrote to us saying this would not be necessarily help to make dog owners more responsible. But we think that it wouldn't do any harm to try!
We thought that if you and us advertised free poop scoops better more people would clean up after their dog. When we gave some of your poop sccops to dog owners they didn't know that you could get them free or where you could get them from.
Owen
We also want a lot more signs inour area because there aren't many and people also don't know that pupils from our school play there. We would like these signs to be yellow if possible so that they are bright. We have made some great signs and we would like permission to put them up, please.
We also want the police to get involved. We would like a policeman or policewoman to help us look after the Meadows and to help inform dog owners about the Law. And finally another thing that we would like you to consider is making our area a dog free area like the one in Bruntsfield links....(show the slide)... you can see that a fence helps to let everyone know that this is a very special area and one that children would like to use on a regular basis.
Duncan
To conclude, we would like to say thank you for listening to us and we do hope you take our comments seriously and that you will help us keep the Meadows clean and safe. Thank you.
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Part of this presentation was shown on 'Scotland Today' a Scottish National news programme and the children were also interviewed in the Meadows. Everyone was very proud of the work done and their teacher, Mr Dimeck, thinks they are brilliant.
and tell us what you think.