Don't step in that!

One of my pet peeves as a dog owner (pun intended) involves people who refuse to pick up after their pups. This troublesome bit of anarchy (we live in a society, people!) is frustrating when it occurs in parks or on public sidewalks, but especially when the doggie deposit in question is on my property.

So I was intrigued by a recent story in the New York Post reporting that a newly opened rental building on Long Island “has ordered up DNA-sampling kits for dogs as a way to catch scofflaw owners who don't clean up after their pets.” Once implemented, this would be “the first genetics-based poop patrol in New York,” the Post says.

Here’s how it works. The program would require a saliva swab from the mouth of each tenant’s dog. The samples would go to a lab in Tennessee, where they would be entered into a DNA pet registry. If a groundskeeper finds Fido’s feces on the Long Island site, he or she would mail a sample to the lab, which would, as the Post put it, “match it to the doggie who dunnit.”

The offending owner “could be fined from $50 to $1,000, but that would be up to building management. That's on top of the $90 charge the tenant pays to sign up for the registry in the first place.”

I’m of two minds on this latest example of the wonders of DNA testing. On the one hand, it seems like a sensible and reliable way to pinch the poopers, although it’s only practical in a small, controlled setting in which all of the potential offenders have been swabbed and entered into the database.

On the other hand, isn’t it a bit over the top? Granted, the fear of getting caught and fined may motivate Fido's human to do the right thing, but using DNA analysis to identify pooping pooches strikes me as an example of something cooked up by a mad scientist with too much time on his hands.

“Well,” Frankenstein said, the construction of his monster now complete, “perhaps now I should focus my prodigious skills on the task of identifying errant canines that defecate among the dahlias.”