The Scoop on Poop

At Dog Jogs, we know dog poop. The various shapes, sizes, and colours… we have seen it all. It’s inevitable when you are a Dog Walker in Edmonton! They say dogs are a human’s best friend, but for dog walkers, their best friends are poop bags. Okay, enough with the crappy jokes! Here are 5 things you may not know about dog poop.

1. Dog poop is not a good fertilizer

Some people may think that since cow manure is great for vegetation, dog poop is too. This is not the case! Dogs have a very different diet than cows, which makes their poop acidic. That is a no go for your plants!

2. Dog poop is a major source of water pollution

We tend to assume that most of our water pollution comes from industrial wastes; In reality, it mostly comes from household and farm runoff of fertilizer and pet waste. It should be no shocker that dog poop is abundant in bacteria, so it can wreak havoc on aquatic ecosystems. One gram of dog poop can contain up to 23 million fecal coliform bacteria, so imagine how much of this bacteria is in water polluted with pet waste! Remember to pick up and properly dispose of your dog’s poop!

3. Dogs may prefer to poop in a specific direction

This study found that “Dogs preferred to excrete with the body being aligned along the North-South axis under calm magnetic field conditions.” This means that dogs may align their bodies with Earth’s magnetic field when they do their business! Do you know the routine dogs do before they poop? The spinning around and around? Maybe they are truly channelling their inner compass to get properly poop oriented.

4. Companies like PooPrints are using DNA samples to catch the non-scooper poopers

Yup, you read that right. PooPrints is a company based in Tennessee that uses doggy DNA samples to help communities identify the people that don’t pick up after their pets. The program is currently being used by over 6,000 communities in multiple countries including the UK, Canada, and the United States! Pet parents swab their pup’s mouths for DNA and their genetic profile is securely uploaded to the DNA World Pet Registry database. When a community member spots dog waste that has been left behind, BioPet Laboratories will match the poop to pet. Would you ever suggest that PooPrints be used in your community?

5. Dog Jogs has a Pooper Scooper competition!!

2022 was Dog Jog’s second annual Ultimate Pooper Scooper competition! It is our most competitive and ruthless team challenge where we see which Dog Jogger can pick up the most poops in one week. Some Dog Joggers were picking up 9-10 poops in one day! If you go to our Instagram you can watch the story highlights of each Dog Jogger, which depicts some of the trials and tribulations of the Pooper Scooper competition.

If there is one thing to take away from this blog, it’s to pick up your dog’s poop! It’s not good for our yards, crops, and water, so let’s vow to scoop and properly dispose of our pet’s waste. If you are tired of picking up poop on your dog walks, let Dog Jogs, the poop scooping experts, do it for you!