The pandemic saw a dramatic uptick in the number of dog adoptions across Calgary. While this was a great thing for the canine population of the city, it has left a large number of new dog owners facing the tricky problem of dealing with the unpleasant job of dog poop clean up. Even for experienced dog owners, the challenge of keeping your yard free of pet waste can be a challenge, but one that you have to take seriously or pay the price.
The Dangers Of Ignored Pet Waste
Depending on the size and number of dogs that you own, poop cleanup can be an awful daily chore, but it’s one that you ignore at your own peril. Some of the dangers of leaving dog waste out on your yard for too long include:
- Unwanted visitors – it may sound gross, but there are many pests, such as rats and mice, who are highly attracted to pet waste. By leaving your dog’s poop out for extended periods of time, you’re offering up a dinner invitation for all manner of neighbourhood pests. Once they’ve found your yard is a source of food for them, it’s almost impossible to get rid of them, even if you hire professional dog waste removal services. It also sends out a message to other dogs that your yard can be used like the neighbourhood toilet and you’ll quickly find yourself inundated with other people’s pets’ waste as well as your own.
- Poisoned plants – it’s common knowledge that poop from herbivores like chickens makes for amazing fertilizer as their droppings mixes the digested plants and bugs into a healthy mix for your plants. However, it’s a completely different story when it comes to carnivore poop, and even if you only ever feed your dog dry kibble, their poop is high in proteins that become toxic when they start to break down. Left untreated, dog poop will slowly degrade and spread poisonous chemicals onto your grass and plants which will take a major gardening overhaul to fix.
- Poop inside your home – if you have small children at home, you know that they like to run and explore everywhere, and rarely pay attention to where they are going. In a yard filled with dog waste, it’s highly likely that at some point they’re going to step in a pile of poop and not even realise it. This poop will then get tracked throughout your house, creating unsanitary conditions and a smell that will take weeks to fully get rid of.
There’s also the fact that your yard will smell disgusting, especially during the summer months as the heat causes your pet’s waste to break down quicker, and you’ll notice infestations of flies coming to your yard for a quick feast.
Keeping Your Yard Poop Free
It’s clear to see that you need to be on your top dog poop clean up game. It’s possible to do it yourself with a pooper scooper, and you’ll need to make sure that you have enough time to get the job done thoroughly. However, when it comes to pet waste removal, Calgary presents some unique challenges. To begin with, no one really wants to spend time following their dog around during the cold winter months, but neither do you want to wait until the snowpack melts and find all the presents your pet left for you throughout the snow season. The long winter nights means that there’s less sunlight before and work to find all the poop, and the high summer heat means you have to act quickly to get to the pet waste before it starts to degrade.
Get Professional Help
While it’s of course possible to arm yourself with a pooper scooper and a strict cleaning schedule, many Calgary dog owners opt to hire professional dog waste removal services. Here at Scoop, we are here to help get a handle on your dog poop situation, and we have many different packages to meet your pet waste needs:
- One-time clean up – if you’re simply feeling overwhelmed by the scale of your dog waste problem, then our initial dog poop clean up service is for you. We’ll send out our team of dog waste experts armed with a range of pooper scoopers and clean up tools and we’ll have your yard looking like new in now time at all. This option is great for homeowners looking to make their yard look good for real estate photos, or for new homeowners who have moved in only to find an unpleasant scene in their backyard. The prices scale depending on the number of dogs and the scale of the required clean up, but it’s one investment you won’t regret making.
- Pet waste-only packages – once you’ve got an initial handle on your pet waste problem, you’ll want to sign up for one of our dog poop cleanup services. There’s many different options to choose from, but the base service is always the same deal. Once a week (or twice a week if you have four or more dogs), our team of pet waste experts will come to you home while you’re at work and do all the dirty work for you. All you have to do is tell us how many dogs you have and how long you want the service to last for and we’ll take care of everything else, even taking the waste away with us if it helps you out.
- Full property maintenance packages – our best package prices happen when you sign up for Scoop’s year round property maintenance packages. The pet waste component of this property management deal is heavily discounted, and you’ll get seasonal garden and lawn management on top of the dog poop clean up services. This year round services also includes snow and ice removal during the winter months. All of these property services give you untold hours back to spend on the things that are important to you, safe in the knowledge that your land is being properly cared for and maintained.