Confessions of a Pet Waste Snob

When I first heard about the dog waste removal business, I thought its main value would be in removing the problem of doggie land mines. The hazards of dog poop, to me, meant the rigors of having to clean the mess out of my Adidas with a stick. Growing up in Dallas, Texas I had never even heard of such a business.

However, I did remember when the invention of the Pooper Scooper arrived in the '70s. My best friend's family bought one and Doug had to use it once a week. I was amused. At my house, I had never picked up dog poop. I believed it would just "disappear" and "become dirt" in a few days. It either dried out, got washed down, or mowed over. When it rained, we played in the storm water laying down to make a dam by the curb.

Truthfully, I thought it was crazy that my best friend had to pick up dog poop. I chuckled about it. And when I saw the implement in his garage, I cringed. Dog poop, to me was just a minor environmental annoyance. I accepted it like I accepted Yellow Jackets and the summer heat. It was bad, but you didn't need to do anything about it.

All that changed when I started researching the subject of dog waste removal.

I didn't know that dog waste was the fourth leading cause of water pollution, classified by the EPA as a non-source point pollutant. I didn't know that 1 gram of dog waste contained some 20 million bacteria, germs, viruses, pathogens and parasites. I didn't know that, according to a Univ. of Arizona study conducted this year, just by walking through grass contaminated by dog poop, your shoes pick up hundreds of thousands of germs, and more than 90% of those germs transfer to floors in your home. Creepy.

I didn't know all that. And for good reason: it was not until advances in DNA fingerprinting in the mid 1990s that researchers were able to trace the origin of fecal matter in our lakes and streams to their common source, man's best friend.

The problem isn't really our loving pets, of course. Its been the misconception of dog owners, like me. That misconception began to rear it's head almost from the start. Manning our booth at the Whiterock Lake Festival in May 08, we met plenty of people who readily admitted they thought dog poop was fertilizer.

It's a common misconception. Simply enough, fertilizer manure comes from animals that eat grass. The poop of herbivores consists of grass, so of course it is good for plants. Meat eaters, like humans and dogs, are different. You can't use their poop for fertilizer because it contains microbes by the billion. In fact, the Center for Disease Control warns that humans can get sick if they eat plants "fertilized" by dog waste because the plants can absorb the living microbes some of which take years to fully break down. Case in point, round worm eggs remain viable in the soil for 3 years and can infect humans or other dogs that come in contact with the soil.

And of course, the more you think about it, the more it all makes sense. For example, during recent floods authorities have made one thing very clear: don't drink the water. In fact, don't even step in it if possible. You can get infected if you have a cut anywhere on your skin. We have heard how it spread cholera, dysentery, and many other ills. And why is that water deadly? Fecal matter from humans and pets.

And so we started our public information campaign. We volunteered to do water testing in and around White Rock Lake and more. It's an important issue and one that every dog owner can do something about. Sgt Poopers^® is committed to being the leader of the pack. Let's make Dallas a greener city.