DNA testing used to uncover dog owners who don’t scoop

[TexasTowelie]

Warning to dog owners who don’t pick up what their pets leave behind: Your dastardly deeds may no longer go undetected.

A growing number of North Texas apartment complexes are using DNA testing to trace pets and fine owners who ignore poop-scooping regulations.

“It should reduce or eliminate dog waste on the property,” predicted Jennifer Okland, community manager at the Gates of Allen Station, the latest area complex to require DNA testing for dogs.

The results of the simple cheek swab will be kept in a database by a private lab. Any pet waste found on the property will be matched to its pooch. Owners face fines ranging from $200 to $350.

The approach is being embraced by private dog parks, homeowner and condominium associations, RV parks and apartment complexes throughout the U.S. and Canada, according to PooPrints, a Tennessee-based company that has about 30 customers, mostly apartment complexes, in the Dallas area.

[font color=green]It looks like the lawn maintenance personnel at apartment complexes were just assigned another shitty duty (eeks, I used doody as an adjective and a noun)!

It's ridiculous to believe that someone is actually going to collect the specimens and mail them to a lab for analysis. I wonder how many negative matches will have to occur before the property owners realize how stupid this expense is and when the people that are paying rents or mortgages in this area give the managers hell for building this unnecessary expense into their rental or mortgage rates.[/font]

[Warpy]

1. Maybe just the threat will have a little less dog shit on the ground

It can be done. However, as you pointed out, it most likely will not be done.

I lived on Beacon Hill in Boston. At the time, the prevailing joke was that once it had been Beacon Valley, full of skyscrapers, but the city paved over the dog shit every spring and now it was a steep hill packed with 3 to 5 story tenements.

To this day, I call piles of dog shit "Beacon Hill land mines." Nobody out here gets it.

[ashling]

2. OMG! Agenda 21, Agenda 21

Sorry, I've been readong emails from my kookie relatives again.

I hope I don't get any dos poop on me while I am