Evie Bradford, owner of Lawn Doodles, based in Shelton and servicing Thurston, Mason and Kitsap counties, has been in business since the end of 2005. Equipped with a rake and a bucket, “Big Red, the industry standard,” as she puts it, Bradford and other professional scoopers travel to clients’ homes to rid their yards of the unsightly and biohazardous poo. What Bradford refers to as “doodle hunting,” locating and collecting the waste product, takes an average of 10 to 15 minutes per yard. “Sometimes it takes longer to clean the equipment than it does to clean the yard, and other yards are as big as three acres. One time, an initial cleanup was 30 big black plastic bags’ worth of poop.” (Author’s note: Ewwww). 

Pooper scoopers visit most homes weekly and also work large gatherings such as dog shows, pet fairs, and Humane Society events. Clients range from folks who don’t have the time or desire to clean up after their dogs to pregnant women, disabled individuals, and the elderly. Many companies offer discounts for rescued dogs, “not necessarily to promote adoption, but to reward it,” Bradford says. 

When I spoke to Laurie Ness, owner of Dr. Doo Dog Waste Pick-up in Richland, she was working with one of her favorite clients, a rescued greyhound named Prance. She told me a story of the American dream they don’t tell you in school. Ness had been a wildlife biologist for 15 years, mainly working with endangered species of birds. While in Alaska, her dream job lost its funding (I guess it wasn’t teaching endangered birds to drill for oil). Devastated, she moved to Eastern Washington and worked for a private company searching for dead birds and bats below wind power turbines. The pay wasn’t that great, which led her to read the book 555 Ways to Make Extra Money. “It was either window washer or be around animals and scoop poop. There were plenty of window washers in the area, so … ” for the past five years Ness has been scooping poop and loving it. And she’s not the only one to scoop up success when the dog of opportunity pooped.

 

Vicki Thatcher, owner of Les Scoops, servicing King and Pierce counties, was laid off from a job in heating and air conditioning and decided to go into business for herself. “Seven years ago I told my brother about the idea (of scooping poop professionally), and he told me I was crazy. Now he doesn’t think I’m so crazy,” Thatcher says. She works four days a week, has more time for her family, coaches soccer, and, like any great entrepreneur, hits the links regularly.    

Is there really a market for this? 

I think the numbers speak for themselves. The American Pet Association estimates that there are more than 71 million pet dogs in the United States, producing more than 4.4 billion pounds of waste every year, which is enough to cover 900 football fields with 12 inches of dog waste. (I just want to say Pooper Bowl).

 

Now don’t think it’s all fun and games. In addition to the cleanup, their job description also involves informing their clients of the presence of worms, blood, parasites, and foreign objects in the dogs’ excrement. Foreign objects? 

 

“There’s not much that a dog won’t eat, and of course, it has to pass it as well,” Thatcher says.

 

The list includes: hair scrunchies, nylons, underwear, socks, diapers, balloons, golf balls, whole candy bars still in the wrapper, broken Christmas bulbs, and the occasional feminine hygiene product.

What do they do with it? 

King County doesn’t accept dog waste from businesses, so the poop is double bagged and placed in the customer’s receptacle. Other companies are able to haul away the waste and take it to the landfill for their customers. Double bagging is a pretty standard requirement for pet waste to reduce exposure for sanitation workers. 

 

In addition to cleanliness in the disposal process, the scoopers are also quite strict about what is referred to in the food service industry as cross contamination. “A good scooper will make sure that they have disinfected themselves and their equipment before leaving a job site to ensure they don’t pass bacteria from one yard to another,” Thatcher says. In addition to a clean yard, all the pros I talked to are also concerned about raising awareness on how dog waste can affect the health of pets, people, and water.

Don’t tell me there’s a serious side

Candy Bauman of the Thurston Conservation District and Jennifer Johnson, who works on education and outreach for Thurston County Environmental Health, explained that high levels of fecal coliform bacteria found in the Henderson and Nisqually watersheds led to a rapid decrease in shellfish harvestablity. DNA tests showed that a large percentage of the fecal coliform bacteria responsible for closing down shellfish harvests was linked directly to domesticated dogs.



According to the Thurston County Public Health Department, a day’s waste from one dog can contain 7.8 billion fecal coliform bacteria, enough to close 15 acres of shellfish bed. Now multiply that by the approximately 45,000 dogs living in Thurston County alone and you have your own little WASL practice test. 

 

The simplest explanation goes like this: storm water washes dog poop from yards and parks to the nearest water source, in some cases draining directly into the Puget Sound, where it collects in the shellfish. This doesn’t actually harm the shellfish, but imagine what it does to that unsuspecting shellfish eater. Big trouble, they realized, and they knew they had to act fast. So they teamed up with the Thurston County Public Health Department and formed the Watershed Stewardship Program, called in what every PR campaign needs — a person dressed in a giant animal costume with a catchy mascot name (in this case, Scoopy Doo) — and set out to inform the public of the importance of taking personal responsibility for pet waste cleanup.

 

Now you may be asking yourself, can I still laugh at the people with the blue plastic bags? Of course you can, but the fact is, Johnson tells us, “Pet waste contains harmful bacteria, which is a concern when people, especially children (and when someone says children, you know they really mean the future generations) are exposed to it.”

 

Bauman adds, “There’s this shame about picking up your dog’s poop. We need to give people high-fives for picking up after their dogs.” And as far as the outreach goes, Bauman says, “Anything that makes you feel more comfortable about putting a plastic bag around your hand and picking up your dog’s waste is great.”

For more information, check out www.apaws.org.

 

To see footage of the 2006 APAWS Turd Herding Contest, search it on youtube.