Using DNA to Fight Dog Owners’ Discourtesy in Brooklyn
NY Times Article by Ginia Bellafante
On a frigid Wednesday evening in January, 40 residents of One Brooklyn Bridge Park, a condominium complex converted from an old printing factory on the Brooklyn Heights waterfront, gathered at Wag Club, a dog grooming and training service on the ground floor, to discuss an issue that had been stirring tensions in the building. Dispersed among the 440 or so apartments are about 175 dogs of varying sizes, breeds and dispositions. As it happened, some of their owners had been behaving badly.
Something had to be done, but what precisely? For some time, dog waste had been a persistent problem, especially during inhospitable weather, when people were allowing their pets to relieve themselves in stairwells and corridors.
Because there was no “hard data” on the issue, as one memo from the building’s board of managers to residents put it, the staff had been instructed to keep a record of incidents for the month of December. During that time, the memo revealed, there were 52 reported occurrences, “a mix of diarrhea, feces, urine and vomit: found on virtually every floor including the main lobby and north and south lobbies; found in all five elevators and with the staff cleanup time ranging from 10 to 50 minutes (average time roughly 20 minutes) per incident.” What was happening wasn’t merely gross, it was also getting expensive. So in December the board decreed that all dogs in the building had to be registered and have their DNA tested, allowing stealth excrement to be matched to what we’ll euphemistically call the dogs’ wayward owners.
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Posted by chesliepickett
on Aug 3 2015. Filed under The Buzz.
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