Plymouth walkers "fed up" with dog-injuring cyclists

I thought the poo tree fetish was a Scottish thing. Along with leaving bags full of poo-filled nappies outside your flat door. 

Because walking to bins a minute away is just too stressful up here.

I've been brought up with and owned dogs all my life and just like humans you do get the nasty ones there's no denying that.
Yet throughout my life I have never heard of such crap as dropping a shite filled bag by accident and to not notice it's no longer swinging around your hand. As for leaving it lying to come back for is shocking and I cannot agree with such behaviour.

Dogs vs Bikes - a flashpoint for invitable internet war.

All we need is a BREXIT angle to make it perfect.

I use the national cycle route 28.

It is used for cycling, running, walking, dog walking, by families with small children on cycles and now many let's call them unfit people trying to improve their health but not that confident in a bike. The last thing they  want is to have a loose jumpy dog coming at them. 

Some cycles go too fast It has to be said (most those commuting by bike) though its my observation most cyclists are sensible. 

The route is relatively new and the old walking only path is adjacent to the new but most  dog owners don't want to use it.

You see I just don't get it:- The dog is always on a lead near a road because the dog might get injured. But when the dog is off  a lead on shared paths both the dog and cyclist can be injured! 

I've seen a large dog run excitedly towards a little tot on his bike and scare him to death, a nice introduction to cycling! 

Half the problem is signage, no prominent signs to showing dogs on leads and cycles checking speed. It just would be a great shame to put people off cycling especially those on bikes trying to improve their health who otherwise would never be on the road and families with children. 

I've heard of 'losing your shit' but struggle to believe that losing a full poo bag is easy to do, unless you're trying to lose it.

Neither does that explain the poo trees - unless the bags are just hung on branches and absent-mindedly but perfectly innocently left there, too?

The first problem we have here is selfish arses and entitlement:
20mph+ strava segments on paths that children use to go to school;
dogs being walked all over the path and left to jump up at other users ('it's OK - he's just being friendly' - I'll be the judge of that, and he's being a big-toothed, muddy-pawed prick);
horses leaving piles of crap right at the gates/passing points - how are huge mounds of shit from any animal in a public place an acceptable by-product of any hobby?

The next problem (for us) is that, as mentioned above, cyclists are an out group. A complaint about cyclists' anti-social behaviour makes 'news'.

Both issues can be tackled, but we haven't got the government to do it.

As a dog walking cyclist...

- don't hate all dog walkers for dog shit. This is as bad as blaming all cyclists for RLJing. Most are responsible and pick it up. There are some selfish fuckwits who don't.

- Poo bags are remarkably easy to lose. Do you really think we'd go to all that bother to pick it up, then dump the bag on purpose?  I don't know why anyone would dump a filled bag - they would've not bothered to fill it in the first place. Some walkers (myself included) leave a bag to pick up later if there's no bin en route. But some are lost by mistake. Think of it as an empty wrapper falling out of your pocket.

- Speeding past dogs or giving the owners close passes is as bad as drivers acting like twats around cyclists. If you're using a shared use path, and it's a haunt for dog walkers, expect loose dogs.

- I don't usually use retractable leads but I am atm as one of my dogs has forgotten how to heel and I'm trying to train him to return to me. It's taking some time, and a lot of treats.   He's fine in the garden, but gets excited elsewhere. I don't like it, and I can understand misgivings about them.

- I was concerned about the dogs and children, so I've always tried to make sure the dogs are comfortable around them. Unfortunately, this has translated into the Shih Tzu deciding that he loves kids so much, he'll go and say hello to them all the time. Even when they're on bikes. Another thing I'm trying to train out, even though he gets away with it most of the time as he's so damn cute (which doesn't help as so many stop to pet him anyway - it's self-perpetuating).

- Not every dog will be well trained, as not every cyclist will be immediately confident the first time they ride on the road. It takes practice and training to improve, so there will be Works In Progress.  (And even in London, finding a dog trainer is harder than finding cycling proficiency lessons.)

Bit late to the party, but there have been lots of sensible comments on this. Shared use paths are obviously places where cyclists need to be give consideration to other users, and go more slowly where necessary. I can believe that there are cyclists who don't show much consideration, because cyclists are people, and plenty of people are selfish idiots.

However, I do think it is telling that one of the photos shows the complaining couple letting their dog walk on the other side of the dividing line, presumably in the cycle lane. My experiences as a runner and cyclist echo those of other posters, in that dog walkers are more likely to be thoughtlessly inconsiderate than cyclists, and a dog + lead + owner invariably takes up more room than a cyclist, so they do pose a hazard to other users of the path, especially cyclists who are moving faster and can't stop or change direction as easily as pedestrians. At least the couple in the article aren't using extendible leads, which are the work of Satan and must be destroyed.

My harsh but pretty reliable rule is to be extra-careful with those who aren't necessarily always in total control of their movements or reactions - young children, the infirm, and dogs. Especially with the latter, I generally assume that they're going to leap into my path at the last moment. Still have the odd hairy moment though, usually because a dog on an extendible lead finds the prospect of getting in the way of a moving mass of metal to be too hard to resist.

They might have been banned, but they're still very much here.

My most curious one was where a guy in the park was stood just off the side of the shared use path with his dog at heel but off the lead. As I approached I looked the owner in the eye to make sure he'd seen me (there was a small fence behind him surrounding a playground so he only had one way to go really), and whilst still making eye contact he decided to lob his dog's ball across the other side of the path, resulting in me taking evasive action to avoid the poor wee mutt. Probably a proper brain fart from the dog owner, but I did wonder whether he was trying to be malicious. 

Not to say that all cyclists are as angelic as myself, but I have far more experiences of an out of control dog causing me a problem (several whilst running and cycling offroad), than an out of control me causing a dog a problem (none at all in fact).

Usually when asking someone to keep their dog under control, they sort of make an apology or excuse that it would never bite me as they drag the savage snarling brute away. Unfortunately I don't know that and I have the bite marks from other encounters to dispute their assertion. I only recall one instance where the dog owner was adamant that it was my fault - for running on a footpath, because apparently that is illegal.

Don't even get me started on the abandoned piles of dog shit!

If it's a shared use path then retractible leads should be banned. The arrogance of lazy-arsed dog owners who think they are cool letting their dog head in all directions is beyond me. They *know* they are a menace, to joggers, pedestrians and cycliss alike. Leads and dogs can head in any direction and tangle legs/wheels. 

A friend is a kennel owner and a top UK dog trainer (his dogs were in a recent Batman movie). He HATES retractable leads, and says people who use them are (knowingly or otherwise) grossly irresponsable. He has seen many lead mechanisms fail and the dogs go running off, into traffic, across parks etc.

Basically, retractable lead = lazy, irresponsable, antisocial.

I suspect there's a bit of "man bites dog" in this story. Dogs biting/snagging/etc cyclists wouldn't be news would it?

My wife was recently bitten by a dog whilst out running. the owner said it was my wife's fault and the dog bit her because she was running!!

The whole thing is part of a wider cultural pretext - that cyclists are a nuisance.

If I wrote to the paper saying that I was riding my bike and some pedestrians walked out in front of me causing me to swerve and fall off. Would they print a headline saying that 'Plymouth cyclists call for pedestrians to watch where they're going'.

Try it and see. 

Anti-cyclist stories are page fillers. Part of an accepted group to knock on. So if anyone's wondering where the sympathy is for the couple and their allegedly clipped dog, well you need to see the bigger picture. It's not about cyclists acting dangerously, or being dangerous. They're a statistically, comparatively harmless group. 

to put cyclists with pedestrains on the same path is dangerous and this concept to share the paths should not have happened. children on bikes should be allowed on the paths not adults.

If I had a dog I'd teach it to ride a bike.

Nowhere in this report does it state whether the dog(s) in question were on a lead or not, whether the park owners have a policy in place as to whether dogs SHOULD be on leads or allowed to run free.

Now that the weather is starting to cool down a bit I go through Windsor Great Park, in the park there are areas where dogs have to be on leads and areas where they can roam free.

Still the biggest bug-bear is the morons walking one side of the road whilst dog is on the end of an extendable lead on the other!

Double standards quite simply. Pedestrians given right of way as vulnerable to cyclists (quite rightly) but cyclists not given the same protection from the motoring public. Makes no sense at all.

I think the world should be more concerned about dogs attacking humans that cyclists killing dogs, which in all seriousness, must have once in a blue moon. Meanwhile....

Official figures for England show 7,227 admissions for dog attacks in past year, compared with 4,110 a decade ago, with under-10s most likely to be admitted.

"There is a growing number of cyclists that ride as fast as they can without bells on their bikes,"

What I draw from this is that I've been doing it wrong. My speed is limited by my lack of bell!

Seriously though, the problem here is clearly on both sides. Retractable leads are rubbish and there are plenty of badly trained dogs out there but on the flip side if you're a cyclist on a shared use path with dogs anywhere near you and you're doing more than 10mph you are doing it wrong.

Both sides have their fair share of idiots and unfortunately with a clear identifier 'the and us' will set in immediately anything happens and both sides will defend whoever they identify with ignoring the facts. Not helped by social media making it much easier to whip up lynch mobs.

I particularly like when the dog is minding its own business in the bushes on the opposite side of the path from them, and they call it to heel on my approach. Why encourage the dog to rush across my path?

Generally, I'm pretty happy to ride slow on the shared paths, after all if I was in a hurry I would use the road.

I think it's pretty clear the relationship between cyclists and pedestrians on shared use paths is pretty similar to the relationship between cyclists and drivers on the roads.

retractable leeds should be banned though the only purpose they serve is to give people who can't control their dogs the illusion that they are in control of their dog.

Its the little plastic bags full of shit which really irk me. Why on earth do dog owners think that leaving it in lying around, on hedgerows, in wire fences... essentially anywhere other than a bin is acceptable? 

I get rather tired when the owner of a pooch shouts "don't worry, he's just being friendly" as jumps up at either myself or my children when either off the lead or on one of the extending leads.  Generally, I'm not exactly sympathetic to said dog when it happens & have had the odd encounter with the owner.  There do so seem to be a particular group of owners who confuse a 4 legged animal, a source of food in certain countries with a human being.  My view is perhaps a little jaundiced, but then I was attacked by a pair of alsations as a child...now when was the last time a cyclis did that to a dog..