DEVICE FOR COLLECTING PET EXCREMENT, AND LOCATION DISINFECTOR AND AROMATIZER

1. Technical field

The technical field to which the subject invention refers to is classified according to the International patent classification as A01 K23/00.

2. Technical problem

Collecting pet excrement, primarily of dogs, whereby, other than collecting excrement, it may also carryout disinfection and aromatisation of the location from which the excrement has been collected.

3. State of the art

It is general knowledge that pets bring immeasurable benefits to their owners and society, while on the other hand they do not represent a danger to anyone if they are well cared for, about which the WHO issued a report in the mid 80's of the past century.

Therefore, it has long been accepted that pets, primarily dogs, positively impact the health of adults and particularly the growth and development of children. With adults, interaction with and caring for pets reduces the risk of heart disease, lowers blood pressure and alleviates difficult emotional states. As far as the development of children is concerned, all studies show that children that are in close contact with their pets are less prone to allergies. Aside from this, when they have to look after their pets, children develop a sense of responsibility and adopt work habits. Similarly, this is also an opportunity for them to learn to look after themselves and to also be sensitive to and aware of the needs of others.

Of course parents, as pet owners, are those who take care of the most important needs of pets while children are allowed to care for their pet according to their age and capabilities. Among all pets, dogs stand out as being a particularly sociable species that enjoy the company of people, so that dogs in our apartments have become commonplace, most often they have become a member of our extended family, whose most important needs must be provided for, among these, immediately after nutrition by importance comes disposal of dog excrement.

Today the dominant, although not only, practice in cities is that dogs as pets release their excrement in city public areas.

Public areas are a common good, we all use them and no one likes to step in someone's pet's excrement and carry around the distinctive odour on their shoes. However this is maybe the most benign thing that may happen to us, along with a slight feeling of discomfort.

There are many examples that highlight the possible consequences that may occur insofar as public areas are not cleaned of dog excrement. Many will probably say "excrement, so what, all of it will decompose in nature and will fertilise the grass". The facts are in actually the opposite. First and foremost, in the case of urban life, at locations where there is a large population of dogs, excrement builds up faster than it can decompose. One should keep in mind that dog excrement is not a natural fertiliser; in fact it is quite detrimental. The fact that dog excrement also contaminates water, because it contains large quantities of nitrogen and phosphorus that promote the growth of algae, whereby it disrupts natural balance, should also not be neglected.

However, it is a crucial fact that dog excrement, just like that of other animals, may be dangerous for health because it is a potential source of infection. Despite the fact that owners regularly take their dogs for vaccinations and clean them of parasites, dogs may easily once again become infected insofar as they come into contact afterwards with the excrement of another dog that is contaminated. Diseases and parasites may easily be brought inside our homes insofar as we do not notice that we have stood in excrement somewhere in a public area.

From the aforementioned ensues the obligation of the dog owner to, after their pet has released excrement on a public surface during a walk, collect its excrement from theBpublic surface and dispose of it in an appropriate and envisaged location, which should be an indisputable practice in all towns, centres and countries, and should represent a civilisational minimum of cultural living in a community.

However instead of cleaning up the excrement, dog owners have the habit and practice of leaving it on city and public areas which creates a problem with the cleanliness of the streets, more precisely with accumulating dog excrement on the city streets which could potentially cause a series of the above mentioned problems, from a practical to a health perspective. It could be said that the cleanliness of city areas, parks and children's playgrounds, but also streets, in all settlements and cities throughout the world are degraded, which is a consequence of the fact that these areas are dirtied with pet excrement that irresponsible owners of pets leave behind when walking their pets, instead of cleaning up after their? pets, they leave the excrement there. This state of uncleanliness of public city areas is constantly increasingly.

The afore described state is an everyday reality even though there are city decisions regulating the keeping of pets, with provisions about the obligations of pet owners to clean up the excrement of their pets left on public city areas, whereby the breaching of these provisions is often sanctioned by hefty fines.

Today this state is a reality in almost all city settlements, despite additional and concerted efforts of competent services working on maintaining street cleanliness. Not even the appeals of city services, on websites or advertisements in city publications, to additionally sensitise the public about the need of keeping up the level of cleanliness in towns in which tourism represents an important factor seem to have any significant contribution to resolving or reducing the existing problem.

Not even the setting up of small cupboards in public areas with the necessary sanitary equipment, mostly free bags for collecting and removing dog excrement from public areas had any effect in this respect either. With the aim of combating the aforementioned habits and practices, city governments have stipulated repressive measures that obviously have not given the desired results. Namely, in practice they are difficult to implement because for the dog owner to be fined insofar as he/she does not clean up his/her pet's excrement, it would be necessary for the municipal officer to be present and issue the penalty to the dog owner at the exact time the dog is releasing the excrement.

In an attempt to resolve the above problem, in some cities they are considering allocating substantial funds to collect samples and carry out DNA analysis of excrement of all city dogs to be able to establish which of their owners are not cleaning up after their pets.

The avoidance of dog owners to collect and dispose of dog excrement from public areas is a consequence of the fact that the cleaning of excrement after their pets and its collection and disposal at a location appropriate and envisaged for this purpose requires that pet owners carry out unpleasant and embarrassing actions in a public place, where there is no suitable equipment in the form of appropriate devices that would make the cleaning and collecting of dog excrement practical, fast, comfortable and with presented sanitary measures.

It is a fact however that not all pet owners are irresponsible in this sense, and that citizens are conscientious and would be ready to clean the excrement of their pets from public city areas, particularly if they had available the appropriate devices to carry out their duty.

In an attempt to find a solution that would ensure that pet excrement doesn't reach the ground at all, that is, the public areas of city parks or footpaths, a whole series of technical solutions have been devised contained in patent literature, such as US 2011/0303162, US 2012/0247402 and US 2013/0327283, which all have in common that upon releasing excrement by a dog it doesn't reach the ground, rather naturally falls into a bag located under the tail of the dog which is achieved by a bag appropriately designed, as well as belts with which the entire structure with the bag is fastened to the dog.

In an attempt to devise and create appropriate devices to collect excrement from public city surfaces left behind by pets, a large number of technical design solutions can be found in patent literature.

Thus in the patent literature there is a large number of technical design solutions, variously conceived, from simple devices such as, for example, the design solutions contained in the patent files DE 202006008631 U1 , CN203388073U, JPH03236729, US2014/0062109 and EP0238074, to complex and sophisticated structure such as those represented in the patent files FR2610959 and US2011/0277705, so it can be concluded that in the previous known solutions to technical problems a balance, compromise and optimum has not been reached regarding the simplicity and practicality of handling on the one hand, and acceptable cost of manufacturing the device itself on the other.

4. Essence of the invention

According to the invention, the device is designed to collect pet excrement from all surfaces on which pets reside and leave behind excrement. This particularly refers to pet walking paths (city, park, public areas...) where the problem of disposal of excrement of the same is most prevalent. Aside from the frame for collecting excrement, the device also contains a system for disinfection of the location of the collected excrement for the purpose of preventing the possible spreading of any form of infection, transfer of viruses and other carriers of any type of disease that excrement (urine or faeces) could cause. The disinfection agent may also be aromatic for the purpose of eliminating unpleasant faecal odours, particularly urine.

The device for collecting pet excrement consists of a shell (1.1) casing with four panels of pertaining thickness as walls of the shell (1.1), that encompass an area in the shape of an upright rectangle, width a (2.1), length b (2.2) and height c (2.3), with openings at both of its axial, frontal sides where the dimensions of these openings amount to a x c.

One side of the shell (1.1) casing, upper, is made so that through its entirety, in the correspondingly thickened panel as the wall of the shell, an opening has been made in the axial direction (4.1) of a certain shape and necessary size to enable the insertion of a handle (1.4) and its movement in an axial direction between two stops.

On the one, axial side of the shell (1.1) casing, the existing opening is permanently closed with a fixed fastening of the rear fixed cover (1.2), while the opening on the front, also axial, side closes as desired with the front moveable cover (1.3), which is achieved by a sufficient movement in the direction of closing the front moveable cover (1.3), which is done using the handle (1.4), that slides along the opening (4.1) in the upper panel of the shell (1.1) casing, which opening serves as a guide for the handle and which has the same shape as the cross- section of the handle (1.4).

Along the rear fixed cover (1.2) fastened to the shell casing (1.1), and when the front moveable cover (1.3) is in the closed position, the interior area of the housing of the device has a minimum dimension of width a (2.1), length b (2.2) and height c (2.3), that must be larger than the pertaining dimensions of the excrement for whose collection individual devices are envisaged, whereby movement of the front moveable cover (1.3) by a length of movement p (3.1) should be at least equal to or greater than the length J (2.2) in which way in the fully open position of the front moveable cover (1.3) a surface of the following dimension is achieved p x a, whereby it enables the carrying out of the action of collection of excrement with a completely open front cover (1.3) with enough reserve the same can be encompassed and stored in the container (8.1) of excrement of the corresponding dimensions.

The handle (1.4) may also serve as a tank for liquid (1.5).

The excrement container (8.1) is positioned by inserting it in the casing and it has one opening turned towards the front moveable cover (1.3), whereby the openings on the shell casing (1.1) enable simple carrying out of insertion and extraction of the excrement container.

The procedure of collecting pet excrement is carried out by using the handle/tank (1.4), to open the front moveable cover (1.3) by the amount p (3.1), whereby an area of the following dimensions is created p (3.1) x a (1.9), inside which there is sufficient reserve to encompass the pet excrement of corresponding dimensions, and the device for collecting excrement, into which the excrement container has been previously inserted (8.1), is placed on the surface on which the excrement is located, after which, using the handle/tank (1.4), a movement in the direction of closing the front moveable cover is carried out (1.3), whereby complete closure of the front moveable cover is carried out (1.3), so that with the movement to the fully closed position, the front moveable cover (1.3) in front of itself pushes the excrement until it is thrown into the excrement container (8.1 ), whereby the removal of the excrement from the surface it was located on has been achieved.

After movement of the front moveable cover (1.3) to the fully closed position, the described process is completed, by pressing the pump (1.6), the liquid pressure increases (1.5) which is located in the handle/liquid tank (1.4) whereby spraying of the liquid is achieved (1.5) through jets (1.7) onto the surface where the excrement was located, so that by using the liquid that serves as a disinfection agent, disinfection of the location of the collected excrement is achieved, resulting in the prevention of possible spreading of any form of infection, transfer of viruses and other carriers of any type of disease that the excrement (urine or faeces) could cause. By using a liquid (1.5) that is not only a disinfection agent but also an aromatic one, elimination of unpleasant faecal odours, particularly urine, is simultaneously achieved.

5. Brief description of the drawing

Figure 1 : View of the device set in the closed position

Position 1 .1 Shell casing;

Position 1 .2 Rear fixed cover;

Position 1 .3 Front moveable cover;

Position 1 4 Handle/container for movement in both directions of the front

movable cover;

Position 1 5 Liquid;

Position 1 6 Pump;

Position 1 7 Jets

Position 1 8 Side openings on the casing;

Figure 2: Axionometric view of the device set in the closed position

Position 2.1 : a, Width of device casing;

Position 2.2: b, Length of the device casing;

Position 2.3: c, Length of the device casing;

View of the device set in the open position

Position 3.1 : Dimensions of the maximum opening (p) of the device casing;

Position 3.2: Stops of the maximum opening, that is, dimension p;

View of device casing

Position 4.1 : Axial opening in the upper panel of the shell (1.1) casing as a guide of the handle;

Figure 5: View of the front moveable cover with handle

Figure 6: View of the front moveable cover with jets

a) View of the handle side

Position 6.1 : Opening for insertion and fastening of the handle;

b) View from the outside

Figure 7: View of the handle

Figure 8: View of the device in the half opened position with inserted excrement container Position 8.1 : Excrement container;

Figure 9: View of excrement container

6. Mode for carrying out the invention

From the overview of the technical design solution itself according to the invention, the device for collecting pet excrement with the possibility of carrying out disinfection, as well as aromatisation of the location, its purpose ensues and is evident, as well as the method of realising the invention.

The technology applied, primarily industrial and even trade manufacturing of the technical design solution according to the invention, falls within classic mechanical engineering technology, mostly the technology of moulding plastic material, given that some of the plastic materials represent the most favourable choice from the aspect of product process costs and moulding technology processes.