HINT – it’s NOT Fertilizer!
PLEASE ‘Stoop And Scoop!’  You pick ‘it’ up IN the house, right? Pick it up outside, as well.

Besides the fact that it’s the law, we shouldn’t have to remind folks to do the right thing and pick up after their pets, but as a pet owner myself and dog walker, I always take extra bags along on walks to pick up after other people’s poop.  Why do I do that?  Cause the last thing I want is my pup walking right into a pile of doodoo and then bringing it back into our home!

OK … True story!
I’m walking down in the ravine behind my house with my pup Ginger one day and come across a neighbour who’s also enjoying our backyard oasis with her dog, Floyd (yes, as in ‘Pink Floyd’).

Floyd is a black lab, a total sweetheart, and super friendly.  Floyd is running wildly about the ravine off leash, having a blast, while his owner (let’s call her ‘Olga’ for the story) happily watches on from a distance, while insatiably puffing on a cigarette. Ironically, Olga is an RN. 

She greets Ginger and I cheerfully and starts to tell me how much she loves to smoke … the inhale into her lungs, the exhale into the air.  Weird conversation, I know, but it gets better.  As she finishes up her cigarette and drops her butt to the ground (SMH), I’m pulling out a poop bag to pick up someone else’s day-old dog poop.  I voice my disappointment about this and she says, “Why bother picking it up??  It’s good for the grass!”  (brakes screeching!!)  Whaaaaat?!!

Seems to me this is a perfect opportunity to educate a seemingly loving yet irresponsible pet owner on the importance of picking up dog poop!  Calmly, I ask her what her dog – who pooped somewhere out in the ravine already – ate for breakfast that morning. She names some disgusting kibble brand.  *Side Note* In my years of research, I’ve come to learn that there’s no one brand better than the other – they’re all basically the same … but that’s another blog!

She tells me the name of the kibble and then I ask her, “What’s in it?”

“Beef and stuff”, she replies.

“Interesting.  Do you have a garden in your backyard? Plants? Flowers?”

“Yes, I do!”  

“Great!  Do you add dead animal parts to your soil to help your flowers grow?”

“Of course not.  That’s crazy!  How would that help my flowers grow?”

“Exactly!  What’s crazy is that you feed your dog ground up animal parts ‘and stuff’ (things we can’t even pronounce) and then think, just because it comes out looking like fertilizer, this ground up animal stuff is good for the grass?  What do you expect to get from the ground when you bury chicken bones?  A Maple tree? No. In fact, a good DIY fertilizer is everything but animal parts … grass clippings (if you don’t use chemicals), weeds (so powerful and packed with goodness), kitchen scraps, tree leaves, coffee grounds, eggshells, banana peels, etc.

Her reply?  “Oh, wow … That explains why my flowers always die when I add Floyd’s poop to the dirt.”  YIKES!!!   End of story.

Here are just a few good reasons to ‘Bend down, Bag and Bin it!’

💩 Pup poop = oil spill??  Interesting enough, the EPA classifies poop as a pollutant that negatively impacts the environment  

💩 Pup poop is too acidic to be fertilizer – it does a number on the grass

💩 We all hold bacteria – good and bad.  Pup poop can also contain nasties like E. coli, tape and roundworms, salmonella, parvo and others

💩 Every gram of pup poop has 23 million coliform bacteria a nd wastewater systems are not able to filter them

💩 Much like Big Ag, our fragile ecosystem can handle wild animal poop but isn’t ready for the amount of poop our pups put out per city

💩 Pup poop can also make other dogs and people sick

No one wants to step in dog doodoo. For goodness sake, have a roll of Earth-Rated poop bags on hand always and ‘Bend Down, Bag, and Bin It!’

Happy Walking!!