Litre litter canine fright

Press, 22 January 1988, Page 30

Litre litter canine fright

NZPA London Britons are intrigued by the latest handy hint from “crafty Kiwis” — how to rid one’s lawn of doggy deposits. Readers of the “Daily Telegraph” were recently told in a column that New Zealanders had taken to leaving plastic bottles, half-filled with water, lying on their lawns. This had, it said, the “inexplicable effect” of preventing stray dogs from fouling.

Since then the “Daily Telegraph” has been inundated with readers offering their ideas on the matter. Among the explanations offered in the newspaper is one that once the water becomes stagnant, the smell will make dogs think that the area has been claimed by another animal. Another suggests that, since dogs never fouled their water supply, they see the water in the

bottles and go elsewhere. But the most unusual explanation suggests that New- Zealand dogs are somehow different from the British variety. The animal, one reader says, sees the bottle as another dog’s deposit which has lost its colour. "The theory goes that the vagrant dog then decides that any animal capable of producing droppings the size of a litre bottle of lemonade is well worth avoiding.”