DNA test finds doggie-doo offenders

Whose poop is that on the lawn?

Nothing ruins a fine MIAMI — day like an unwelcome encounter with dog excrement. That unmistakable squishing sensation underfoot triggers instant resentment. The mess, the stench, the indignity. What’s a victim to do?

Man’sbest friend has always produced poop. But the poop disposal problem — whether it’s left in fresh stinky piles or carelessly discarded baggies — has become a pet peeve in cities where the dog population is growing faster than the human population. There are nearly 90 million pet dogs in the United States today.

Dog poop scofflaws are causing friction throughout the Miami area, on sidewalks and lawns all across a metropolis already steaming with hostility. Beware: Your neighbors are out to catch you brownhanded.

The war against offenders is ramping up with the deployment of spies, guilt mongers and camera-wielding snitches.

The latest tech: DNA testing that matches Rover to his poop and punishes Rover’s inconsiderate owner with a big fat fine.

“It’s rude, it’s unsanitary, it’s ugly, and I am amazed that nobo dy picks it up where I live,” said Gloria Ehlebracht, who takes long walks around Coral Gables and Coconut Grove with her rescue dog, Cooper. “There’s a guy with a French bulldog. One of those selfish people with the attitude of ‘Me first, second and third.’ Iwrotehimanotetotellhim I took a picture of him and it’s not fair that I have to clean up his poop. After that, no more issues with Mr. Bulldog.”

Can’t blame the dog. It’s the dog owner who is the real animal. Many owners flout pooper-sc ooper laws man- dating t heremovalofwaste to a closed receptacle on the owner’s property or a munic- ipal collection station. They don’t fear fines of up to $500 because enforcement is rare. So swales and trash pits have become depositories for feces

She was never supposed to be my dog. I was working on that fall Saturday when my wife and our four children visited a farm near Leipsic to look at Border Collie puppies.

I didn’t know which one, but I knew they would be coming back with a dog. You don’t take four very animal-friendly kids to “look at” puppies without bringing one home.

This farmer had kept pure- bred Border Collies on hand as ever vigilant four-legged labor. Their herding prowess was the breed’s calling card long before they started going air- borne to acrobatically catch Frisbees.

We had c hickens at the time, and pigs that had their own fenced-in enclosure, so we didn’t need a herder. But these kids needed a dog. They needed a playmate that had the same boundless energy as them, and one who would keep track of them all across our rural homestead.

For most of her long life, Libby was the consummate watch dog and black-caped guardian angel. Although there were no fences, she never left the property , but she end- lessly patrolled its perimeter, and paced like a nervous first- time father in a maternity ward whenever the kids were outside. She loved to race up and down along the creek bank, in mock pursuit of trucks or farm equipment passing by on the county road that ran par- allel to the waterway.

Libby taught us a lot about instincts. Without so much as a single day of training, she would relentlessly herd. She and assortments of colorful plastic bags — artificial blooms on the landscape.

Residents resort to vigilante justice. They take photos and videos and warn offenders they will be turned in to code enforcement or exposed on social media.

“I’ve got a trash pit by my driveway and it’s filled with half a dozen bags every day,” said Armando Acevedo of Coral Gables, who persuaded a city inspector to post notices in the neighborhood. “Often the bags fall right through the teeth when the garbage truck shovels it up and sit there for another week. One time after a lady tossed her bag I followed her in my car. I felt like a stalker. I found out where she lived and I was tempted to take all the poop bags and dump them on her doorstep.”

His n eighbor sandacity commissioner urged him to do it, but he didn’t.

“What am I supposed to do?” he said. “March up and down my street accusing peo- ple? I don’t understand how you can live in a nice place and not take care of it.”

Shaming might work — if you have the nerve. Proliferating poop along Edgewater Drive in Coral Gables has gotten so disgusting that neighbors are confronting neighbors, first kindly offering empty bags as a sort of face-saving interven- tion, then thrusting bulging bags as retribution for unal- tered habits. The doorman at one building has had to chase irresponsible dog owners and their defecating pets off the would loop back and forth, herding vehicles leaving the driveway. She would follow the tractor as we mowed, always making that herding arc right behind. And even though they were all good swimmers, Libby would try to herd the kids away from the pond. While they were swimming on a hot summer day, she paced ner- vously nearby, never stepping away from her guard duty.

As our children grew older and got busy with high school and then college, it became evident that Libby was now focusing her attention on me. If I was trimming the trees in the orchard, she was right t herebytheb ase of the lad- der, pacing and watching. If I was working in the garden, she was always close by, her head on a swivel as she con- stantly scanned the area for any perceived danger. No one would get close to that kale while she was around.

If it was a 95-degree day in August and I was going out to pick sweet corn , Libby was right there a couple of paces behind me. And in the dead of winter, wind blowing, snow swirling and the cold trying to cut through you like a straight razor, she was still there. If I went out to get firewood, she always went alon g.IfImade the long walk out to the barn, trudging through deep snow, that loyal Border Collie never let me make that trip alone. In her twilight years, she was clearly my dog.

We lost Libby several months ago, her years of ser- vice ended, leaving us with those icky mixed feelings — we hated to see her go, but we also did not want to see arthri tisand other ailments grassy knoll.

“I called out politely to a guy who had a dog off leash on our grounds and he reacted very defensively. It’s a delicate situation, especially in Miami where people are capable of violent reactions,” said Les- lie Sternlieb, who recounted a scary movie theater experience of a man climbing over the seats to stick his face in hers after she had asked him to cease his distracting behavior.

What has become of basic civility? Why in the name of Lassie or Fido do people treat their community like an open sewer? There are even tales of upbraided neighbors extract- ing revenge with stealth poop deposits on front stoops. One Miami resident place dasign on his swale asking people to refrain from dumping; the sign was defaced with poop.

Cities are installing more collection stations, some with biodegradable bags to help prevent another environmen- tal consequence of the poop problem: the buildup of plas- tic in landfills. One brand, bio- DOGradable, manufactures its bags in India. Another brand embossed President Donald Trump’s likeness on the bags.

Dog ownership etiquette has evolved radically since the days when dogs were let out to roam freely and nobody thought twice about it. Same thing with kids.

But societal mores have cha n ged. They even sell leashes for children now. City officials in Naples, Italy — where they’ve got much more serious criminal enter- continue to strip her of that robust watchdog skill set. She is missed — by the UPS guy who always had a treat ready when he backed up t hedrive,bythe country neighb orswhosaw her as a fixtur ei n the sprawling neighborhood, and by every- one who got to witness her greyhound sprints, her relentless herding, and her unwavering loyalty.

On that long walk to the barn after a recent snow, I stopped and looked back toward the house and there were only my footprints. No more Libby. No more tracks in the snow.

By late in the summer, as Libby approached 15 years of age, she had slo weddown considerably. She only ran halfway down the long drive when vehicles pulled away from the house, she could no longer bound up the four steps to join us on the deck, and she was regularly nap- ping during the day for the first time in her life.

Then o nedayshewasg one — physically gone. This dog that had never left the property, never crossed the bridge and gone onto the road, and neverfailedtobet here at the doortojoinmeonthewalk to the garden or the barn — this dog was nowhere in sight.

We searched every corner of the barn, the now empty chicken coop, under the deck, and inside the double row of large arbor vitae that form a windbreak around the pond.

We combed the immediate area and had numerous country neighbors on the watch. We distributed flyers with her picture, although everyone around knew very well that super-charged Border Collie that was always on sentry prises to worry about — are cracking down on dog waste with $650 fines.

“People used to think dog poop was harmless; it was considered fertilizer when in fact it contains more bacteria and chemicals than human poop,” said J Retinger, CEO of BioPet Labs. “We also have way more dogs in the world. Millennials have dogs before they have children.”

BioPet’s subsidiary, Poo - Prints, may be the ultimate solution for eradicating dog poop scofflaws. The company, which has grown 40 percent since 2016, provides a DNA testing program to 3,000 clients — primarily homeowners associations and build- ing managers — in the U.S., Canada and England, including250inF lorida. More than 250,000 dogs are in the PooPrints registry. Communities that implement the program require residents to test and register their dogs. Offend- ing poop gets tested, too, and the DNA is matched with the offending dog. The owner faces fines or eviction.

“Property managers report a 95 to 99 percent reduction in waste,” said Ernie Jones, Poo- Prints sales manager. “People know DNA testing is accurate and will make them accountable. If you know you are going to get fined $250 to $500 you will take a couple minutes to pick up after your dog.”

Said Retinger: “We are pet friendly. Properties that used to ban pets are now more apt to allow them under our program.”

Dogs are tested with a cheek swab that is mailed to the Poo- Prints lab in Knoxville, Tenn. Poop is tested with a collec- tion kit that includes a plas- tic scalpel for scraping off a dime-sized sample.

“Somet imeswegetsenta lot more than we bargained for,”Jonessaid.

Residents who resist, claim- ing the program is a violation of their privacy, are usu- ally wowed by the increased cleanliness of their condo or townhouse development, Retinger said. Sabotage is easy to detect in contaminated samples. Samples that don’t produce a match typically unmask a resident who is hiding an untested dog. duty in our yard.

Her disappearance made no sense since she was anchored instinctively to the property and was likely too old and frail for anyone to steal. For several days we agonized over her fate and found no logical explanation for the mystery.

Then it all came together — she was the faithful herder, the dedicated guardian and pro- tector, to the end. A painstak- ing inspection of the brushy creek bank, done in hip boots from down at the water level, revealed that she had simply crawled under a pile of brush, laid down, and died.

For one final time, this loyal canine had done what her instincts told her to do, what thousands of years pro- grammed into her breed’s DNA showed her. As she sensed death was approaching, Libby got far away from the herd she had been protecting (us), so as not to draw any predators c losetot he herd once the odor of death brought those scavengers to her corpse.

After 15 years of dedicated, never-wavering service to our family, this soldier of a dog used her final pulses of lif e to protectusonce again. She’s buried out by the chicken house, where her high-alert patrols often start ledthe hens but no doubt kept the coyotes and foxes away.

Other pets — rabbits, cats, chickens, a nd maybe an amphibian or two — occupy the same general plot, but only Libby gets a marker. She was more than a dog. Those tracks in the snow told me she was always on duty, serving and protecting.

This w inter, there are no more tracks in the snow.

My in-laws Marilyn and Jim are retirees who have been enjoying an active lifestyle in Hilton Head, S.C.,formorethan26 years.

This has included golf, tennis and walks along th ebeachesa nd pinetreelined neighborhoods.

Every morning, Sasha, their sandy-color mixed breed, is usually up by 7 for breakfast and then her first walk of the day.

The Savannah rescue and Marilyn set off down their street toward the neighborhood park. They pass apartment buildings and a lagoon as they loopbackt o their starting point.

When the two return home, Sasha retires to the sunroom for a late-morning nap. Marilyn sits down and enjoys her breakfast and morning paper with Jim.

Nothing unusual about the scene I just described, dogs and their owners taking morning walks.

Whatmakesthisd aily event a little more unique is not that Sasha is 10 to 12 years of age but that Marily nandJ im are 90 years young.

For senior adults, the benefits of owning a pet are many. According to agingcare.com, lower blood pressure, stress reduction, social interaction and increases in physical activity are just afew.

Marilyn and Jim have owned multiple dogs duringtheir7 0yea rs of marriage starting with Fritz, a Miniature Schnauzer. When their last dog, Chaz, ablackandtanWelshTerrier, passed unexpectedly, they assumed at their age dog ownership was not in the cards.

But Marilyn and Jim missed the daily antics of afo ur-legged friend. They missed the daily walks.

Last July when my husband, Ed, and our daughter, Jordan, were visiting to celebrate Marilyn’s 90th birthday, the two seniors talked about how much they missed having a dog.

Not missing a beat, Jordan started a web search of area shelters for the perfect dog for her grandparents.

It didn’t take long for her to hon ei n o nasmall female stray in Savannah. Jordan made an appointmentattheshelter.

Before his parents could protest, Ed volunteered to drive and the four were off to meet the little dog.

The pooch was friendly and liked being held.

Most importantly, the

Living in Your Pet’s World

MEMORIALIZE YOUR PET BEST 5 DOGS FOR SENIOR ADULTS

1. French Bulldog

2. Poodle

3. Schipperke

4. Maltese

5. Pembroke Welsh Corgi

SOURCE: VETSTREET.COM furball liked to walk. Ed had taken her outside and she walked beautifully on aleash.

The two seniors were hesitant about adopting the shelter dog until Ed assured them that if they couldn’t take care of her, we would. Jordan echoed her dad’s sentiments.

That was it. The two signed initial adoption p apers.Sincetherescue was new to the shelter her health status was ye tunk nown. After a thorough medical exam and spaying, the adoption would be finalized.

Jordan picked out name, Sasha.

The exam revealed Sasha had been spayed. But that’s where the good health news stopped.

Sasha had heartworm, ringworm, skin allergies and multiple cysts. Each issue had to be addressed.

Undaunted, Marilyn made an appointment with their vet. Sasha proved she had as much tenacity as Marilyn and became the picture of good health in a few short months.

Sashaislowkey.She enjoys curling up next to Ma rilyni n the afternoons for reading and TV viewing. She has learned that Jim, a former business executive, specializes in pats and rubs.

The dog’s companionship adds more interest to my in-laws’ lives. Three daily walks, the mid-day’s being a mile long, keep them all moving.

Sashabenefits,tooas this once-forgotten dog receives the love and attention she so rightly deserves. the

,a writer, has been entertaining families for more than 20 years. She lives in Bellbrook with her family and two furry animals all who provide inspiration for her work. Shecanbereachedat spicerkarin@gmail.com. Do you have a beloved pet that has passed away? You can honor a pet with Pet Memorial to be printed in the newspaper on our Pet Spot page. The memorial will include a photo. For more information, call 937-223-1515 or email coh.classified@coxinc.com.