AN athletics coach is on a one man mission to get dog owners to clear up after their pooches as he is so fed up of doing it.

Charlie Northey, an athletics and swimming coach who works with Brecon High School and at the adjacent leisure centre as well as volunteering with Brecon Athletics Club, which is based at the centre’s track, spent an hour one day earlier this month clearing faeces from the track area.

He said dog owners even tie plastic bags filled with their pets’ smelly droppings to the fence next to the long jump sand pits while others just throw the bags over the fence and into the club’s compound storage area.

Mr Northey said: “I work and coach very late and the amount of times I have seen people just lob a plastic bag over is unbelievable.

“What part of the brain are they not engaging to think that is acceptable?”

The coach said owners should be aware of the serious diseases that can be carried in dog’s poo and the life changing consequences they can have for people, especially children, who come into contact with dog’s mess.

Dog faeces can carry deadly ecoli and salmonella as well as the toxocariasis infection which humans can catch from contaminated soil which means dog fouling at sports grounds can have serious implications.

Dogs are banned from the sports pitches at Brecon High School and the leisure centre but many dog owners ignore the restrictions.

Mr Northey said he is only too aware of the dangers from dog poo as a friend, in his native Sussex, lost the sight in her eye.

He said: “When I was in school a young girl, a very good friend of mine, lost an eye due to toxocara.”

In an effort to try and help dog owners Mr Northey says he now carries bags with him when out walking to hand to any dog owners who have left without them.

But he said the reaction from one dog walker, when he was walking in Hay-on-Wye has spurred him on raise the profile of the issue.

“I’m quite a quiet unassuming guy but this lady let her dog go and I offered her a bag and she looked at me like she was mortified and ran off.”

He said he then had to clear the dog’s droppings from the river side path.

That was when he decided to note incidents of dog fouling and says in a two week period this month he recorded 21 times people had either allowed their dogs to foul or where dogs mess in bags has been left in locations other than poo bins.

Those include bags tied to the fence alongside the long jump pit at the athletics track.

“I removed the bags and binned them on Monday evening and just like magic the following day at 10am there was yet another full dog poo bag tied to the same fence,” said Mr Northey.

He said he’d like to see initiatives such as a DNA register of dogs introduced, which mean owners who allow their dogs to poo in public could be traced through the droppings, and stricter by-laws.

He said the DNA register has been used effectively across the world and he said in Sussex a by-law requires dog owners to carry three bags with them when exercising their animals.

Powys council has previously encouraged residents to report any dog fouling incidents to it by email or telephone.

It is an offence to allow a dog in your control, even if you’re walking someone else’s dog, to foul in a public place and to fail to clean it up immediately after it has fouled.

Public places include footpaths, playing fields, parks, car parks, churchyards and cemeteries.

Those who fail to clean up their dog’s mess could be issued with a £75 fixed penalty notice of face prosecution through the courts.