Too Much Poo

Long before I got a dog I spent hours wondering what would encourage some dog owners to pick up their dog’s poo. I’d walk to work, skipping over the piles, or abandoned bags, getting a little furious that I couldn’t look up and enjoy the sky. I needed to keep one eye on the pavement to keep my shoes clean.

Then when I got my own dog, I realised that bagging it and binning it takes a bit of sacrifice on behalf of the dog owner. Bagging it isn’t so hard, as long as you have dog poo bags on hand. Sometimes, you think they’re in a pocket that turns out to be empty. A lot of times, you bag it but there’s no bin in sight, and you’re left with a vulnerable bag of stink that takes up a hand and scents your walk. (The number of bags of dog poo that litter public places, having been bagged but not binned, implies many people dislike the stinky carrying stage.)

I wanted something lightweight and affordable that would free up my hands and keep the stink away. So I fashioned a prototype for what would become the Sammy Sac for myself, and my walks improved enormously. Picking up my dog’s poo was not a burden in the same way. I also got the major smug factor that I was being a good citizen without the burden.

It was after dog walks with my new baby in a pushchair, that I decided to make it a product. I already had too much poo in my life from my baby and my own dog, without also having to hose someone else’s dog’s sticky, stinking poo off the buggy wheels before I could wheel the buggy into our house. It’s quite hard to skip over dog poo when you’re pushing a mini-truck that is a) massive, and b) blocks your vision. I realised the Sammy Sac can work in two ways - by improving the process of bagging and binning it, it both rewards dog owners while also getting more poo off the streets.