I love so many things about this story.
Here’s the scoop: Some apartment complexes are using DNA testing on dog doo to find out who’s not cleaning up after their pets.
The Timberwood Commons in Lebanon, N.H., opened this year and already has had problems with some residents who aren’t cleaning up messes their dogs leave.
So manager Debbie Violette is going to use commercially available DNA sampling kits to check the DNA that dogs leave behind when they go.
“We’ve tried doing the warning letters. We’ve tried all sorts of things,” she said Friday. “It’s always a problem. It’s just that the majority of people are responsible pet owners and there are a few who are not.”
[…]
Violette just received the kits from a Knoxville, Tenn., company called PooPrints, a subsidiary of BioPet Vet Lab. Jim Simpson, president of the lab, said about 20 properties in the country have been using the kits.
For testing samples, the company provides a feces collection kit. A small amount is put in a solution and mailed back to the lab. DNA is extracted from the feces. The lab then checks to see if it matches any of the profiles listed for the apartment complex.
I presume the next step will be to create a doggy DNA bank, a canine version of CODIS. Which will be followed by civil libertarian concerns about pet privacy rights. Eventually, a case will reach the Supreme Court. And it all started with someone saying to him or herself “You know, there’s got to be a way to figure out what jerk keeps letting his dog poop here and not cleaning it up.”
Pretty doggoned clever!