Beth Baty was at the end of her leash.
She’s the property manager at River Bend Apartments, a housing complex near the University of Wisconsin Arboretum — and a place where, until recently, people apparently didn’t know how to pick up after their dogs. It was “an ongoing problem,” with inconsiderate dog owners leaving messes around the property and inside the buildings, Baty says.
She tried just about everything she could think of to encourage residents to do their duty, sending out countless written reminders and even installing convenient cleanup stations with plastic bags and garbage cans throughout the property. “Nothing was working,” she says. “It just seemed to get worse.”
That’s when a prospective tenant told Baty about PooPrints — a dog DNA database and genetic service developed by BioPet, a canine research laboratory based in Knoxville, Tenn. Dog owners perform a saliva swab of their dog’s cheek and mail the sample to the company, which in turn stores the dog’s genetic profile in its database. Then, when a mystery pile appears at a property, management collects a small sample, puts it in a vial with some water and mails it off to PooPrints for identification. If there’s a match, the offending dog’s owner gets a fine.
Baty, who began using PooPrints at River Bend in April, was worried at first that the tenants would resist the new program. But she found that the majority was supportive of the idea — probably because they were just as sick of the dog poop problem as she was. It was an immediate success.
“We have not had any issues since,” she says.
The testing process takes about two weeks, during which scientists extract the genomic DNA and use microsatellite (STR) fragment analysis to determine a match, according to the PooPrints website. The process establishes the genotypes of 15 loci (the position of a gene on a chromosome), plus a gender marker. The company charges $50 for a swab kit and $60 for testing.
Anna Schloesser, who manages Middleton Shores Apartments in Middleton, is a PooPrints representative for the Madison and Milwaukee areas. She learned about the service about three years ago, when she was facing a similar waste disposal situation with the owners of the 70 or so dogs that live at the property.
“It was getting so bad,” she recalls. “It was getting to the point that we thought we couldn’t [continue to] have dogs here.”
Since starting the service, she’s only sent four waste samples in to PooPrints for testing. “It’s more of an accountability program than it is a punishment,” Schloesser says. She was so impressed with the results, she decided to become a regional representative for the product. In her first year, about five or six property managers signed up for the service. Now, she has about 40 clients in the Madison and Milwaukee areas.
Arika Kleinert, a property manager with McKenzie Apartments, says the company has been using PooPrints for about a year and a half at its properties that allow dogs. So far, she’s sent three samples in for testing. It’s never easy to confront a tenant, she says, but for the most part people have been understanding and apologetic.
“The only downfall is if the dog is a nonresident, like someone walking through the neighborhood,” she says. “Then we’re stuck paying the matching fee.”
Schloesser says people have raised concerns about feuding neighbors or management framing dog owners by somehow planting fraudulently obtained dog poop, but she sees that as an unlikely scenario: “That’s not the goal of this program.”
