Study debunks dog myth

Press, 16 August 1988, Page 8

Study debunks dog myth

PA Hamilton Dogs are three times more likely to excrete on lawns with plastic bottles on them, a Dunedin study has found. Putting plastic bottles half filled with water on front lawns has long been used as as solution to messy dogs, but a Dunedin psychologist’s study presented at the National Psychological Society conference in Hamilton yesterday has debunked this myth. Dr Louis Leland and a team of second year students spent 28 days last month monitoring 27 selected lawns with a defecation problem. Fourteen of these lawns had a number of bottles on them and 13 were left bottleless.

Dr Leland said there was 3.6

times more chance of a lawn with a bottle on it being “hit” than one without.

Lawns were monitored every day for a month and significantly more “permanent products” were collected on the bottled lawns, he said.

“Canines have a distinct preference for lawns on which bottles have been placed,” he said. One of the reasons for lawn bottling behaviour being sustained could be the small chance of a dog actually defecating on a lawn, he said.

The study had shown dogs would defecate on lawns with bottles for 91 out of every 100 days. But dogs would only defecate on bottleless lawns for two of every 100 days, he said. Dr Leland said some sceptics believed plas-

tic bottles were left by garden gnomes as territory markers. People monitoring the study had to pick up all the droppings using a special “turn a plastic bag inside out” technique. Coloured slides of grimacing students were presented as part of the findings. “If markers are left undisturbed gnomes may one day come back and claim lawns for themselves,” he said.

Dr Leland said the study had been interesting but had not been without its “unpleasant aspects.”

However, its results could not be completely conclusive as bottles used in the test were placed lying on the side. Upright bottles might have more effect in staving off wayward dogs, he said.