It’s the familiar yet unwanted sight that happens all too often after winter’s thick white coat of snow finally succumbs to spring’s bluster of longer days and beautiful, hot sunshine.
Poop everywhere, like a minefield of muck. An entire season’s worth of the stuff revealed, much to no one’s pleasure.
“In the springtime, I’m always disgusted when the snow finally leaves and we’re left with this melted ‘poop soup’ out there,” said Dr. Tammy Wilde, offering a compelling visual image. “It doesn’t look good in the community and it’s not healthy for both our pets and our children.”
Anywhere you go throughout St. Albert’s extended trail system or numerous parks, there are inevitably the leavings of many dogs, left unpicked by their lazy owners.
Thanks to one local veterinary clinic, there’s one park that has been taken care of, at least for a day. Last weekend, several staff members of the Tudor Glen Veterinary Hospital participated in what they appropriately called Poop-a-thon, part cleanup, part public health message and part charity fundraiser, all wrapped up in one 23 kg baggie.
Nathan Schenn, operations director at the clinic, explained that the vets and the other employees wanted to do something to prove to the city how important it is to the public and to their pets to scoop the business away.
“It’s very important!” he exclaimed, remarking that it’s not just about the superficial cleanliness of our shared spaces, especially if the dog has a problem with worms. “From the safety standpoint, other dogs can get into feces. It obviously can get transferred to your kids. We thought it was a good thing to bring awareness to.”
“It is a problem,” Wilde continued. “We’ve had parasitologists come through and sample areas. Alberta is quite affected with roundworms for sure. Most places that I go walking, there is poop laying around.”
She added that this is why pets aren’t allowed in certain areas like playgrounds or beaches.
“There’s a health concern. If we were adamant dewormers, if we were adamant at picking up our pet stools, our pets would probably have more access to places we frequent.”
Unpicked pet feces, apart from being a violation of a section of St. Albert bylaw 38/78 ($258 for the first offence, $515 for the second), helps to spread numerous parasites including roundworms, hookworms, whipworms, tapeworms, and trematodes or flukes. They can survive in the soil for years and be spread directly from the pet to another animal or human, or even indirectly by being carried into houses and remaining on the floor or furniture. Even indoor cats can get a parasite in this manner.
That’s why the hospital’s staff picked the park around Lacombe Lake on Sunday afternoon. The area has an off-leash area that sees a lot of two- and four-footed traffic. It was an attempt to hit the problem at its core.
“We knew it was probably going to be worse than others. We figured we’d start with that one,” Schenn said.
“It’s a highly used park,” Wilde stated. “We’d hate for it to be closed down for this reason.”
To make the onerous task slightly less unpleasant, two of the clinic’s vets, Wilde and her colleague Dr. Tyler Hughes, broke the group into teams for a little friendly competition about who could accumulate the most excrement.
In the end, the scoreboard showed 12.4 kg for the men’s team and 10.6 kg for the women.
“Just about 50 pounds of poop,” Schenn said. “Our goal next year is to be there right when the snow melts because that’s probably when it’s at its peak worst, I imagine.”
To make it even more community minded, they also kept a collection from the clinic’s clients and split the money evenly between the Edmonton Humane Society and the Stollery Children’s Hospital at the same time. They brought in more than $300 for this first event, one that they all hope to turn into a larger movement in 2014.
“This one was kind of a grassroots beginning. This year we wanted to keep it not low-key but we didn’t know how it was going to go. Everyone that we told and all of our clients here were really excited about it. They loved the name ‘Poop-a-thon’.”
