Who Is Pooping on My Lawn?

Do you ever wonder where that dog poop on the front lawn is coming from? You never see which dog in the neighborhood is relieving himself in your yard but there it is, every day.

An apartment complex owner in Massachusetts has solved the poop mystery after repeatedly telling apartment renters to pick up after their dogs. When a dog owner rents one of her apartments, she requires them to have a DNA test done on their dog, and then if she finds a dog poop on the grounds of the complex, she takes a sample.

The apartment manager then sends the dog poop sample to a DNA testing facility and gets the results back in a few days. The dog’s DNA is matched up with the DNA records she has on file from the dog owner’s in the apartment complex.

When she discovers which dog owner is not picking up after his or her dog, the dog owner must pay a fine. If there are repeat offenses, the dog owner must either to move out of the complex or find another home for the dog.

So, if you really want to find out which neighborhood dog is pooping on your lawn, you could try DNA testing. Even if you don’t have a record of the dog’s DNA, the poop sample can be tested for the breed of the dog.

Image Credit: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ADog_defecation_1.jpg
By Minghong (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Find Out Your Dog's Breed with Dog DNA Testing

I was talking to the lady next to me at my dog’s obedience class and she mentioned that she was having her dog DNA tested. She couldn’t stand it anymore and wanted to know what mix her dog was. I had never heard of DNA testing for dogs before, so I was quite surprised it was available. (The picture on the right is a German Shepherd/Golden Retriever mix.

The woman told me she ordered a DNA kit online and that the results would cost about $60.00. When I think of DNA testing, I picture big laboratories with scientists in white lab coats, sitting at microscopes, beakers, and test tubes strewn about them. I didn’t realize that testing was that simple.

Everyone in the class was anxiously awaiting the test results. It only took about a week for the results to come back. It was amazing, really. The test gave the actual percentage of each dog breed that her dog’s DNA was made up of. She told me that her dog was tested according to 135 dogs that the AKC recognizes as purebreds.

She found out that her dog was part Australian shepherd, German shepherd, and golden retriever. Everyone in the obedience class was guessing what breeds the dog might be made up of, but no one got the right answer. The dog owner was very happy with the results and a few of the other people in the class are planning on having their dogs tested also.

So, if you’ve been wondering about what your mixed breed dog is made up of, or if you want to be sure that your dog is a purebred, you might want to consider DNA testing for your dog. DNA BreedID.com will do the test for $59.99. That is the least expensive place I found on the internet.