Walking in a winter wasteland

The glacier receding from Nebraska and Iowa has revealed fields of brown in city parks and dog owners' yards.

And we aren't talking about the grass.

This particular brown-about-town represents three months worth of canine fecal matter. Doberman droppings. Pekingese ploppings. Mastiff mountains. Chihuahua chips. Shih Tzu … scat?

“It doesn't matter if you have a big bull mastiff or a little labradoodle,” said Ernie Fierro, founder and owner of the Doo-B-Gone pet waste removal service in Omaha. “Over three months of snow cover, even little piles pile up to a lot.”

Successive heavy snows buried the doggy doo-doo before many owners could pick it up. Freezing cold preserved and concealed the droppings.

Until now.

Some of it looks like soup. It's starting to smell like what it is. Sure glad you didn't step in it.

But you better check Buster's paws — and your kids' Keds — before you let them back in the house.

“I looked out in the backyard for the first time today and thought, ‘Oh my goodness,''' Omahan Missy Smith said late this week. “Tomorrow is the day to clean up the dog poop. … I've got a feeling there's going to be thousands of pounds of it picked up this weekend.”

Experts in the field say this March is the worst in recent memory. The relative heat wave of the past two weeks has led to hundreds of calls to pet waste removal services and several complaints to public health officials.

You've heard of the dog days of summer? Well, these are the dog days of spring.

In Council Bluffs, Tina Krashin was a bit exasperated after receiving a warning Wednesday from the city's Department of Public Health. The notice ordered her to clean up the recently revealed winter's worth of excrement that her two whippets and her Chihuahua had left in their front yard. It's inside a chain-link fence. But it's near a sidewalk.

“There's no neglect or anything here,” said Krashin, who works at a veterinary clinic. “My dogs are show dogs. They're field champion runners.”

They're in kennels inside during the day. When they went out to relieve themselves in the yard over the winter, they mostly used the same general area.

“The way the snow fell, there was no way of getting out there and picking it all up right away,” Krashin said.

The snow melted only last week, Krashin said, and she meant to get out there as soon as it dried up a little. A city inspector checked back Friday and said the cleanup looked good, to which Krashin replied, “Duh. Usually I clean it two or three times a week. But it's been covered with snow!”

Health Department Director Donn Dierks didn't know about Krashin's case specifically. He said an unusually high number of complaints have come in this March about private property and city parks, especially Bayliss Park.

A Council Bluffs city ordinance requires pet waste to be picked up within 24 hours, even on private property.

“We know that's not going to happen,” Dierks said.

He and his inspectors understand it's been a tough winter. Even so, they “aggressively address” complaints and issue notices when they spot egregiously excessive waste.

What's the problem with too much dog scat?

“Health and safety,” Dierks said. “Mostly odor, but it can turn into a disease problem. …Before the weather gets warm and it starts getting odoriferous, pet owners need to clean it up. That's what I did in my yard last night.”

In Omaha, Douglas County environmental health specialist Les Theisen has had to tell three pet owners to get busy with the pooper-scooper in their yards. He figured his fellow inspectors had handled as many complaints.

People can face a $100 fine in Omaha if they don't remove pet waste, Theisen said. But it rarely comes to that. Inspectors usually give pet owners three to 10 days, they comply and that's that.

Theisen said inspectors are taking into account the kind of winter we had.

“Basically, every few days it snowed,” he said. “When Fido went out and did his business, it snowed right over it and it stayed out there hidden, out of sight, out of mind. Sometimes, it was buried before Fido even finished.”

All of which means business is picking up for such pet waste removal entrepreneurs as Omahan Steve O'Doherty, who started It's My Doody after being laid off from construction work in October.

“I'm getting lots of calls for spring cleanups,” O'Doherty said. “What they're telling me is when they walk into their backyard, well, they can't walk in the backyard because there's no safe place to step. The dogs are tracking it in. The dogs don't have anywhere left to poop.”

Contact the writer:

444-1057, christopher.burbach@owh.com

« Metro/Region

Share