Those who think Calgary has gone to the dogs or has turned into a big pile of poop now have scientific evidence to back their scorn..As the CBC recently told Albertans with a televised report, 127 grams of dog poop, per hectare, per week, is left behind in Calgary parks. That’s 169 poops per hectare over six months. There are more than 8,500 hectares of parkland and natural areas in Calgary. Do the math, and that suggests over 2,873,000 abandoned dog turds per year..Fortunately, researchers looking into this crap didn’t count them all. Alessandro Massolo, an associate biology professor at the University of Pisa, staked out random places with his team. After a 10-metre length of rope was structured to plot out sites, the counting and weighing began.."We would define the area and then look for feces of coyotes, dogs, and other animals in that area to estimate the amount of fecal matter," Massolo told the CBC.."We started thinking, 'Oh my God, this is a lot of fecal matter.'".Believe it or not, academics sat on this matter of high academic importance for more than a decade, the data collecting dust since 2011. Finally, the results were unveiled in an academic paper. .According to the research, off-leash areas were the worst. Maybe owners don’t supervise their pets as well there, speculates Melanie Rock, a University of Calgary professor in the department of community health sciences who contributed to the paper. Or, maybe dogs find more privacy there to do their business..All this isn’t trivial, Massolo says. Other dogs and people could catch parasites, like the tapeworm he’s been studying: Echinococcus multilocularis. It lays its eggs in intestinal tracts and cause a tumour-like disease in humans, not to mention coyotes, foxes, and dogs..Apparently mice eat the poop, then a dog eats the mouse, and the tapeworms eat the dog. Massolo said when he lived in Calgary, he watched his dog closely to make sure that never happened..Rock, whom CBC called a “social scientist,” has done other research on parks. Never mind the speech Calgary bylaws prohibit, Rock says this and other research she’s done in parks show that leaving behind dog poop can cause conflict.."That can make people feel as though they are themselves being neglected and that their neighbours are not respectful," Rock said..John Merriman, a community strategist with parks and open spaces at the City of Calgary, told CBC dog feces aren’t a kiss on the city’s spring cleaning list.."We just don't have the capacity to go through all of the parks, all the off-leash areas; we've got over 150 of those… We do rely on dog owners to pick up after their dogs any time of year," he said..However, city employee said people can always take the initiative as good citizens.."As long as you're in the park and you have a plastic bag to hand, and that can be anyone, I don't feel we have to feel uncomfortable about removing someone else's dog poop,” said Merriman..Merriman said the city just makes sure the garbage bins have room. If people find an overflowing one — or gasp, a dog owner who left warm fertilizer on the ground — they should call 311.."It's difficult for our community standards bylaw people to catch somebody in the act," Merriman said. ."If citizens are aware of particular parks where people are not picking up … we'll loop in our community standards group and ask that they try to do some extra enforcement in the area.".It’s all political theory at work, Rock explained.."In terms of the theme of the tragedy of the commons, where it's difficult to govern a common resource, the larger the area, the more we diffuse the authority or the capacity then the more these kinds of problems take hold," she said. .The good news, apparently, is the city reduced the maximum number of dogs one single person can bring to an off-leash area since the dog dirt collection was conducted in 2011..Rock suggested the groundwork is laid (or perhaps picked up) for a follow-up study to see how that bylaw changed people’s behaviour.."It won't make any difference if people don't feel it's something that can and should be taken care of," Rock said.
