On a chilly, grey October morning, a brand new white VW van drives into the car park behind the Sportsman pub in Lodge Moor. A tall, athletic man gets out, walks to the back of the van and lets five dogs out of the boot, including two off the lead that bound up to me, before following him into the nearby woods. A few minutes later, another white van turns up accompanied by a cacophony of barking. As a woman in a cable knit sweater and jodhpurs gets out it sounds like she must have hundreds in there — but only seven actually emerge.
Over 45 minutes around 12 vans arrive and leave, each with between five and nine dogs in them. One couple, returning from a five mile walk around Redmires, tells me they’ve seen some walkers with 10 and 12 dogs in tow, sometimes even 15, all of them off the lead.
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How can you possibly control that many dogs, I ask. “You can’t,” they exclaim in unison. But as well as controlling them, there is another, smellier problem. “You walk up that path and it’s full of dog poo,” continues the man, pointing in the direction of the woods. Whether you bag it and bin it or employ the “stick and flick” technique to fling it into the woods without making direct contact, just leaving it is unacceptable, he says. “One told us they didn’t need to pick it up as they were a professional dog walker,” chimes in the man’s wife.
Redmires is ground zero in what has become such a big issue that the council have created a new policy to deal with it. Dog walking, which was once something you just did with your own hounds, is becoming big business. After the ‘let’s buy a puppy!’ boom during lockdown, there are now so many commercial dog walkers that the cheery paw, tail and woof pun opportunities for their company names are running out. And, as with any industry, there are those who maintain high standards — and those who don’t.
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