Today FM presenter Dermot Whelan visited Co Clare recently and called out dog owners who failed to pick up their animals’ faeces during the trip.
A regular visitor to the county, Whelan spent many days in Lahinch during his youth and memorably included Kilkee as a focal point in ‘The Noni Bus’, a song released in June 2018 which poked fun at the amount of Limerick people getting their holidays and going to West Clare for the summer months.
Over the first weekend of January, the Limerick native was walking along Lahinch Beach with his wife Aisling and dog Buddy. “I’m new to this dog thing and I’m noticing things about dog owners, a lot of different things,” he said while recounting the tale on the Dermot & Dave Show.
Dermot described Lahinch as “a beautiful strand with golden sands”. The comedian spotted a couple walking a hundred yards ahead with two “big golden retrievers”. “So I’m walking behind and I notice that one of their dogs goes into that dog position where you know something bad is going to happen, he has a hunched back and I’m like ‘that dog is doing a big crap on the sand, ah the owners are looking over, it’s registering with them and they’ll pick it up’, they look at the dog and look away then continue walking. I said to my wife did you see that, we should go up there.
“Then the second golden retriever hunches its back and assumes the position, this dog starts and they just kept walking. I said enough is enough and for once I’m going to say something, this is a beautiful beach but these people are the problem these dog owners who pretend not to see their dogs going to the jax, it always happens”.
At this point, the former Republic of Telly presenter decided to confront the pair and began running against a strong breeze to catch up to them. “I started waving my poo bag in the air. I said ‘do you need a poo bag because I noticed your two dogs did big craps on the sand and you didn’t pick it up. ‘Oh God we didn’t even notice. No we’re grand for poo bags, thanks a million’ and they turned away and started walking away.
“So I said ‘do I pick up your dog crap is that how it is’, ‘oh we didn’t see where they did it so we can’t pick it up’, ‘I’ll show you where, I’ll walk you to them’. I was engaging with the female in the partnership, the guy looked like he would rather be talking to anyone else than me. We had this weird, casual conversation as I walked her to her dogs’ individual poos which at this stage were hundreds of yards back down the beach”.
They soon located the dog poo but Whelan was keen to remind dog owners across the country to clean up after their animals.
