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Cleaning up after your dog does their dirty business is just part of being a responsible dog owner. However, we know that not everyone is responsible.

Nothing sucks more when you accidentally step into a pile of dog poo. Once you've stepped in it you're tracking it everywhere, it's stinky and it's harder than hell to get out of those little crevices on the sole of your tennis shoes. Most of the time you have to wait until it's hardened and then beat your shoes against a brick wall or driveway to get it all out. Life would be better if dog owners would just clean up after their dogs do their business.

While looking at a social media group that I'm a member of, I ran across a rant from a tenant who was calling out her apartment complex because of a letter she received from the apartment office stating that the complex is starting a new dog DNA program to identify the poop of a dog that wasn't picked up after by the owner instead of cleaning up the areas around the complex's trash dumpsters. The pics she posted of the dumpsters are horrific and yes, someone needs to clean them up.  And that is a topic for another time.

What got me intrigued and kept me reading her social media rant was the fact that the apartment complex is actually contracting with a company to do DNA testing on dogs so that the dogs DNA can be kept on file and used by the complex to compare its DNA with DNA from dog poop samples that are collected from around the grounds that are going to be sent off and analyzed. Now it's been a number of years since I've lived in an apartment and this is something new to me.

When I read about this at first I had to Google 'apartment complex dog DNA testing' to see if this was a legitimate thing and I was surprised that it was. Apparently, it's a growing issue across the nation because thousands of apartment complexes have begun the task of creating a doggie DNA database so they can track down the owner of the dog who did their business in a commonplace and didn't pick up the evidence afterward.

In the case of this Tyler apartment complex, they are going to be charging the tenant with the pet a $50 non-refundable fee to register your pet and for the DNA testing on top of the usual pet deposit fee. Then any poop that is found on the apartment complex grounds is going to be collected and a sample sent to the lab for identification. Once identified the tenant with the offending dog will have to face some kind of disciplinary action. The complex in question says this program is already in place in over 5500 communities and they have seen a 95% reduction in the amount of dog waste that is found on the property.

I'm not the only one that thinks this is strange and funny. Posted reactions to this rant are pretty funny. I am wondering too how much is it going to cost the apartment complex to send this poo off for testing and who is going to pay for it to be tested? My guess is - ALL THE TENANTS will pay for testing by paying their rent. Then what happens when they test the poop and the DNA results don't match any dog in their new database?

After seeing this post, another member of the group said he received nearly the same exact letter from his complex's office. This is a new one to me folks. I'm scratching my head about this just as much as you are.

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Just be a responsible pet owner and pick up after your dog. Tell the complex you'll do better and hopefully, you won't have to pay that $50 registration fee and keep your dog's DNA out of the Dog DNA Registry Program. They're not criminals, they just gotta poo!

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