Dog doo DNA testing tracks down owners who don’t pick up feces

Redding >> What do you do when there is too much dog doo? One Redding apartment complex is going high tech to find the answer.

Faced with numerous owners not picking up after their dogs when they poop on the grounds, the management at the Shasta View Apartments plans to start collecting the physical evidence to track down offending pets and their owners.

Apartment manager Yvonne Martin said when they find unaccounted-for feces they will have it bagged up and shipped off for DNA testing. At the least, the testing would identify the dog breed.

Martin said she knows the breed of all the dogs who live at the 51-unit complex — close enough to match the breed with the owner.

Martin said she feels bad when tenants want to try to use the picnic area on the grounds but are dismayed to find numerous canine land mines.

“It’s ruining the grass. You go out there in the picnic area and there’s a bunch of dog feces on the grass,” Martin said. She estimated 80 percent of the tenants have dogs.

“We have a beautiful place for people to enjoy, and on a hot day the feces — you can smell it,” she said. “I want my tenants to enjoy the grassy area without having feces everywhere.”

There are companies that use DNA to match an individual dog to its unique pile of poop. And some apartment managers are taking advantage of the technology.

“That’s what a lot of the property owners are starting to do in a lot of the major cities,” Martin said.

Tommy Gallagher, assistant manager at a complex in Tempe, Arizona, said he previously worked at a property that collected the DNA of every dog when their owners moved into the apartments.

If an owner didn’t clean up a dog’s mess, they would send it off to a lab to match up the DNA with the dog, he said.

Usually, a phone call or an email reminding the tenant of the problem was enough to head off repeat offenses, he said.

“There never was any push back. People were pretty cool,” Gallagher said. The apartment complex also threatened a $25 fine for repeat offenders.

Shasta View also plans to issue $25 fines, “but maybe I was lenient,” Martin said.

Rachel Bolt was out letting her dog, Luna, do her thing Tuesday morning.

But she picked up after him when he was done defecating. Bolt used a bag from a nearby dispenser and deposited it in a special dog waste receptacle the apartment management installed.

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Bolt agreed there was a problem at the apartments, and supported the new DNA testing policy.

“I’d be fine with it. I’m not worried about it because I always pick up her poop,” Bolt said.

While the DNA testing may be picking up in some of the larger cities, the Shasta View Apartments is likely on the cutting edge in the north state.

Jennifer Morris, executive director of the Northern Valley Property Owners Association, laughed when she heard about using DNA to track down pooping dogs.

It may be a tool used by other apartment managers, but she hadn’t heard about it.

“It’s kind of laughable in some ways,” she said. “It’s an interesting concept.”