Public loos proposed for Sydney canines

Press, 19 September 1985, Page 16

Public loos proposed for Sydney canines

NZPA staff correspondent Sydney

A once unmentionable aspect of dog behaviour is troubling the Sydney City' Council.

The council is looking for a solution to the problem of dogs fouling city streets, and the obvious one is public toilets for canines.

The question facing the city fathers of this metropolis of more than three million people and an indeterminate number of dogs is how to go about setting up a successful system of loos for pooches. They wrote to overseas cities to see how they coped

with the problem. In Vienna, the city council has virtually thrown up its collective hands in disgust and despair of training either dogs or their masters. Paris, in what appears to be the traditional Gallic way, simply ignored the letter. The Swiss, it seems, have the answer.

According to Mr Ed Mathis, a street inspector in the department of cleansing in the City of Lucerne, the answer is simple and successful — a post in the ground, surrounded by sand, a scoop for the master, and a bin to deposit the deposit. Dog owners in Lucerne

pay an annual $55 dog tax which finances the toilets. An early version of the pooch 100 was tastefully surrounded by shrubs, perhaps to protect canine modesty, but the dogs used the shrubs instead of the post. A new version was deseigned, without the shrubs. Mr Mathis told the Sydney Council that other Swiss cities, including Basle, provided weatherproof dog excrement boxes which were basically plywood boxes containing a plastic garbage bag.

The Sydney city fathers are considering it.