Wolverhampton man Trevor Smith jumped out the car to grab a paper and took his dog, but left the poo bags in the car, and has now been fined £80 for not having them upon him. He's adamant he always uses poo bags and he wasnt taking the dog for that kind of walk, he said if the dog had of done something he'd of just grabbed a bag from the car and cleaned it up. He wants others to know about this law and not get caught out.
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NewsTranscript
00:00So we're here in Wolverhampton and we're with Trevor and Ted, the double T's.
00:08Trevor, this is your beloved dog isn't it? Yeah it is, yeah. And just fill us in,
00:14you're not too happy about circumstances when you took him out for a
00:18little walk the other day and you just want to kind of make people aware of so
00:22that they don't get caught out. So go on fill us in, what happened? Where were we?
00:26Starting from the thing, I took him a walk and I got him in the car, getting him used to
00:33traveling, he's only two, because I was going to the station to get a paper.
00:38Drive up to the station, train station, found a parking space and normally, I've
00:47took him before, but normally I'll leave him in the car. Yeah. But this time I
00:51thought I've got to get him used to all these people, I'll take him in the
00:55station. Got out of the car, walked across the road about as wide, not as wide as
01:01this room and those two men there with long coats on and I think he said
01:06Wolverhampton Council or something on the thing, they stopped me and said have
01:11you got a poo bag with you? And I felt in my pocket because normally I
01:16have, but because I'd used it that more earlier on, I said oh no, but I've got
01:23some in the car, oh no, they wouldn't let me go and get it out of the car, you've got to
01:28carry it with you and promptly started asking me different questions.
01:34There was two of them, one was actually stroking the dog and I thought they
01:42was going to give me a rollicking and say, you know, don't do it again, but then they
01:45handed me a piece of paper with £80 fine on it and said if you don't pay
01:52it you can go to court and all this that and the other, but you could be fined up to
01:56a thousand pounds, so obviously I thought to myself, well, and then that was it and they
02:02seemed to disappear as fast as they'd appeared and they'd gone and everybody and
02:08everybody I've spoke to about it, nobody, no, nobody knew. Yeah so that's the thing
02:14you want to kind of get out there really, that basically, never mind if your
02:18dog hasn't done a mess, if you haven't got a poo bag in your pocket and you're
02:23with a dog, you can be fined and you were saying even potentially two bags
02:27they're kind of requiring sometimes. Yeah. How's that left you feeling then, I mean
02:32I'm gonna take your word for it that you don't normally let your dog kind of
02:35mess all over the place. No I don't, no. So as an honest man in that respect, it must, you
02:43know, must leave you feeling a bit aggrieved. Well I mean I did feel, I felt
02:49like it was a bit of a ripoff at the time and the more everybody are told
02:54about it, nobody knew anything about it, apparently it's been law since 2023, but
03:04nobody and everybody as I say knew anything about it and I've had quite a
03:09lot of sympathy of people, you know, I mean the fact I wrote to the Metro
03:15News to put a letter in about it, not to sort of try and get me money back, but to
03:22warn everybody. Yeah, make people aware of it. And a lot of people, today especially, have been
03:30saying you know, you know, I'm pleased you've done that, because nobody knew.
03:34Yeah. When I spoke to the chap from the Metro News, he said to me, well he phoned me up and he said
03:41everybody in the office, nobody knew anything about it. Yeah. And that's, and
03:46then since then I've been, I've been, well everybody's been phoning me up. So if you
03:52feel you've got no choice, you've got to pay up then? I've got to pay, yeah. Well the thing is, I know the facts that it is a
04:01law now, whether I know about it, but being ignorant doesn't mean anything. The
04:05law's there and if I don't pay it, I'll end up being, having to pay more and more.
04:11I mean, I'm not, I'm a bit disappointed in them that I could have had a warning. Yeah.
04:16It's a lot of money when you're a pensioner. So yeah, so you'd like to think,
04:20since your dog hadn't missed. Yeah. You know, you'd have liked more of a kind of, well
04:26excuse me sir, this is the law, next time. Yeah, you'll get a fine. Yeah, yeah. I mean, if he had
04:32have done a mess, I'd have had no argument, but one way or the other, I'd have cleaned his up. Yeah.
04:39You've got to cook it from the tissue. Yeah, yeah. So, it's really, I mean, I guess it wouldn't hurt to have like a bit of a, we see
04:48these signs on lampposts, if your dog poops, you will be fined. But it wouldn't
04:52hurt to have a little add-on there, would it? Now the law's changed, you know. Yeah. That
04:56would be useful for people. That would be very useful. You know, yeah. Because it's not just Wolverhampton, it's, this is country-wide. Yeah, yeah.
05:03Well, it's news to me, and I'm sure it will be to a lot of our readers. But it's down to each individual council. Yeah. They don't have to do it. Yeah.
05:11Ah, so it's up to them whether they enforce it. Yeah. Got you. Yeah, yeah.
05:16Well, thank you for telling us your story Trevor, and hopefully that will help
05:21other dog walkers here. Ted wants to get his face on the table. All the best Trevor, thank you sir. Thank you very much, it's nice to meet you. And you sir.