A WEST Dorset pre-school is ‘undeterred’ after a number of their posters put up to encourage dog owners to pick up after their dogs were torn down.

Parents and children at St Catherine’s Pre-school are fed-up of trying to avoid dog poo on their way to school from Dibden View to the Pymore Road school, so they decided to create their own posters, asking dog walkers to pick it up.

Parent Emmy Elsmore, whose daughter attends the pre-school, said she saw a ‘huge amount’ of dog poo on the route and felt that something needed to be done.

She said: “I started off by taking chalk out a circling round the dog poo to draw attention to it to stop people stepping in it, but also to show the perpetrator that someone has noticed it and is not accepting it.

“The area is covered by three different councils – Bridport, Bradpole and Allington – and I started emailing and making contact with them about a year ago to try an get another bin and some signage along the route.

“Will Austin from Bridport Town Council and Tricia Dendle from Bradpole Parish Council have been great, and we’ve had a bin at the top of the bridge put in.

“To reinforce it, I decided to speak to the school about what we could do as children have a way of getting people to notice and it might make people think twice about leaving their dog poo.”

After getting permission from the councils to put up posters, The pre-school children, aged between two and four-years-old, created more than 20 with their own words and pictures on that they stapled along the fence, but after all this hard work, these have since been pulled down.

The children have been out a few times to put their posters up along the route.

Emmy added: “It definitely improved when the children’s posters went up, which I am pleased about, and I hope it continues.

“However, the pre-school leader was handed in some of the children’s torn down posters at the end of last week. It is so sad that someone had actually gone to the trouble to remove them.

“I want to reiterate that we are not going to be deterred and will keep putting them up.”

The pre-school got behind the initiative after a number of parents complained about their children stepping in dog poo on their way to school.

Beth Budden, the pre-school deputy leader, said: “The children have been doing their own drawings to go on the posters and thought of their own messages they want to use like ‘don’t leave any poo on the floor’ and ‘clean up the dog poo’.

“A few parents have said it has been trouble, as that is the main route to come to the pre-school, and quite a lot of their children have stood in the poo, or their scooters have gone in it, which isn’t great, so we thought we would do something about it, something positive that the children can get involved in.

“We have been speaking to the children about showing respect and how dog owners are responsible for picking up the dog poo, so It has been nice they have been getting involved with this community project.”