On our forum, a reader wrote:
The biggest dog toilet in Bolesławiec is in the park behind the stadium/old Barbórka. Shocking! All the dog breeds from Kosiby, Narutowicza and the surrounding area defecate there. A tragedy. “Dear” owners do not clean up and turn their heads away when their dogs do their business. A horror. Entering this “island” of greenery is entirely at your own risk. I feel sorry for the men mowing the grass in this square.
Another forum user took up the subject:
Exactly. I would also like to raise the issue of dogs being allowed to roam freely near Jagiellonów Street, where it is a residential road, not a meadow. And certainly not a wooded dog toilet. [...] It is sad, because children play on the estate, while dogs soil the sand, road, bushes and grass with their excrement. Is it really so difficult to show a little understanding for the people who live there and those who walk there, who have more than once encountered dog poop or a dog running around wherever it wants while its owner does not care?! And if such a dog bites a child, what then?! [...]
A reader added: “I would never clean up after my dog. I am disgusted by dog excrement; I would not touch it even through a bag. That is why I do not have a dog. I also advise most owners not to have a dog. It will be cleaner.”
Let us remind you: failing to clean up after your dog can result in a fine of up to PLN 500. But this penalty does not deter everyone. Well, unless municipal police officers appear on the horizon. Then things can even become quite amusing. “Officers tell me that sometimes people who do not have waste bags with them, upon seeing municipal police officers, can panic and pick up the dog poop with their bare hands,” Kamila Chalewicz-Pudłowska, head of the Bolesławiec Municipal Police, once told us.
We return once again to the issue of responsibility for one’s pet. Under the city’s cleanliness regulations and the Code of Petty Offences, a dog must be walked on a leash and its waste must be cleaned up. “I congratulate the owners who say they would bet their arm that their pet would never hurt anyone,” K. Chalewicz-Pudłowska stressed in April this year. “An animal acts on instinct. It is no coincidence that the number of reported dog bites has been similar for several years—over 160 cases a year in Bolesławiec County.
What is more, it is very easy to become infected with bacteria found in animal excrement. The problem primarily concerns small children, who may come across uncleaned waste, for example in a sandbox. “Until people understand this, nothing will change,” the head of the Municipal Police noted. “But it is still better, because once nobody cleaned up after dogs.”
What do you think the awareness of Bolesławiec residents is like? Do they clean up after their pets? This is important, because we must not allow a situation like the one captured in the cult film by Marek Koterski: