Despite the historic and brutal Civil War history, the town of Brunete, in the autonomous community of Madrid, is a pleasant little town, with a population of just over 10,000, when a stroll down the street can lead to a friendly interjection, as a friend you never knew might greet you with a warm smile, a helpful pat on your dog and a gift that is sure to surprise.
But all may not be quite as idyllic as it seems, especially if you choose to ignore the rules and cause those friendly neighbours discomfort. During a week long trail in February, the city council took on 20 volunteers, all with a friendly demeanour, but with a potentially sinister ulterior motive.
The volunteers would stalk the streets looking for potential victims to befriend, all of whom were in control of dogs at the time. They would indeed smile, offer a greeting and then lavish the dog with love, all the time asking typical questions of polite conversation, such as the name of the dog, the place where you live, and similar, seemingly innocent probes.
Because little did the innocent dog owners know, the information they were giving was always enough for the doggy spies to ascertain the full address of the owner, so as to send them their gift, by hand, so that the owners could delight in the results of their actions.
“Innocent” may not strictly describe our victims however, as the people behind our tale, our spies, our friendly questioners, our volunteers, because the reason they had targeted the dog owner in the first place was because they has been tasked with monitoring dog owners who failed to clean up after their pets had left a “deposit” on the pavement.
The reason for the probing questions, which always resulted in the identity of the owner´s address, was to send them the item that the teams consider must have been “lost”, and therefore reuniting the owners with what the dogs had left behind.
Of course the rather unpleasant gift possibly took away the accompanying fine, but the campaign was an instant success, resulting in 70% less dog waste on the streets, although we shall not bother to ask quite how they quantified this.
The mayor of Brunete, Borja Gutiérrez, said that “although most dog owners in Brunete pick up after their pet, the City Council has invested many resources to respond to a problem that has an easy solution: that all owners pick up after their pet”.
Filed under: http://www.theleader.info/article/39269/
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