WE went for a brisk Sunday afternoon walk.

It was bitterly cold out, so we'd put Matthew in his snow-suit and buckled him in his pushchair swaddled in blanket, papoose and foot-muff.

Fair to say he was snug.

Next was Emily, who wanted to take her bike. Plenty of exercise to get her heart pounding and her internal engine heating her up.

Lou and I wrapped up too and away we went.

Emily's still getting used to the alien concept of balancing on two narrow strips of rubber-encased steel, helped by stabilisers.

But she was soon pedalling off into the distance, her brother giggling from his snuggly cocoon.

We came to a road and told Emily to apply her brakes, look both ways, listening out for traffic, before crossing. She did it perfectly.

Everything was perfect, in fact.

The birds were twittering, the air was crisp.

I was in the country with my lovely wife and delightful children, and a chocolate mini-egg was slowly melting in all its sugary glory on my tongue.

Then the idyll was shattered.

"Urrrggghh!"

Emily was off her bike and was inspecting the sole of her pristine white trainer which we'd bought seven days earlier.

But now it was no longer white and it most certainly did not smell straight-out-of-the-box.

I mentally pictured myself shooting, not the dog that had left the ticking bomb in the grass, but the irresponsible owner who had failed to remove it after his pet had emptied its bowels there.

The bird song now began to grate like a tinkly mobile phone ringtone, while the air was no longer crisp but brass-monkeys cold.

And I bit my tongue chasing the mini-egg around my cheek. What a difference a dog turd makes.

"Great!" I said, picturing myself later in the day removing the faeces from my daughter's shoe with a piece of twig, a damp cloth and a bottle of disinfectant.

Instead of sitting down in front of the fire with a steaming cup of tea and a rich tea biscuit to dunk.

"Well, she can't ride the bike home now, she'll only get it on the pedal," I reasoned, trying to minimise the delay before I got my tea and biscuit.

"You can't stop her riding it home," reasoned Lou. And of course she was right.

My anger was levelled at the dog owner, not my daughter. I was thankful she'd not handled the mess.

So we made our way home and I set to work doing what the pet-owner should have done -- cleaned up after the bloody dog.