Animal defacation

How do you get your residents to pick up after their animals?

Give them a $50 fine for each violation. Make sure this is permitted by landlord/tenant law, and that it's stated in your lease.

Ours says something like "Owner/agent may assess a fine of not more than $50 for failure to pick up pet waste"

Picking up pet waste is also required by the pet addendum, so the residents lease can be terminated if they fail to comply with this agreement.

We usually give a verbal reminder first, then a "friendly reminder" note, then a non-compliance notice, then the fine, then as a last resort, terminate the lease and evict.

A motion sensitive camera works great for catching them in the act and proof, and they aren't horribly expensive.

Good Luck!

A motion sensitive camera is extremely time consuming and tedious, the images are pretty unclear and its difficult to uniquely identify things on the images no matters if you are using new, hard-drive-stored systems, in addition coverage is never complete. (You will not able to afford 100% coverage on your property) you must be able to cover all exist from your building or buildings and 100% of the grounds. Therefore CCTVs are impractical for enforcement purposes.

Now the issue is... to be able to identify the dog and the "dog owner" who fail to pick up the pet waste, and enforce fine for those pet owners who does not abide by with the rules and regulations of the property.

We provide a “PooPrints” program which may work for you - feel free to contact me and I'll give you details.

@Lynn and Rose, I don't know about you, but I can't afford to have dog poop DNA tested. I've found Rose's approach works best. For the most part my pet waste issues are self regulated, meaning residents will tell on each other.

Fortunately the motion sensitive camera has worked very well for us. We are a smaller community and couldn't afford DNA testing. We have a very small green space. The picture doesn't need to be perfect because we recognize most our residents by size, appearance, and pet. Once I even got the license plate number for a car that dumped a mattress by our dumpster. The police tracked them down and make them come back and get it.

My experience has been that the other people in the community will tell fast. All it takes is one of them or their children getting into some dog poo and it is game over for the pet owners. We caught them this was and I had in down time someone man a portable camera and film violations. This was before the motion sensor ones were out at an affordable cost.

I do not have personal experience with the DNA thing but to a person they all have told me it is rather high. I do not know if the owner when found could be made to reimburse the property for the testing or not. To me, this would be great enforcement as well.

Dog feces are one of the most common carriers of the following diseases:

Heartworms
Whipworms
Hookworms
Roundworms
Tapeworms
Parvo
Corona
Giardiasis
Salmonellosis
Cryptosporidiosis
Campylobacteriosis

Infections from some of these bugs often cause fever, muscle aches, headache, vomiting, and diarrhea in humans. Children are most susceptible, since they often play in the dirt and put things in their mouths or eyes.

So, this little information above may help some to get energized. I am a dog owner and I love my Beagle, but we for sure do daily police in our yard as he is trained to go in one area and if it is not clean he is smart enough to say OK, the rest of the yard is fair game, so you can say he also trained us as well!

dog carries diseases specially if they are not well taken care of..
report those neighbors.

@Nate and Elizabeth - you are correct about the disease transfer. These microbes also get into our drinking water supply.

CDC estimates as much as 14% of the US population is already infected with roundworm from dogs (toxocariasis)however many people do not show symptoms. Kinda scary thought! All prevented by proper pet waste management/control in our urban and suburban areas.